Kulture Meltdown: Resident Evil (2026) — "You're hiring a glorified Postmates driver to hand you the cure, are you dumb?"

We're in Wayne Media. I'm not a cop, so I don't know what to say, but... I have an emergency here. Hello? Oh, God!

Oh, shit! Hello? Can you hear me? All units be advised. Resident Evil, exclusively in theaters September 18th.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special crossover episode of the CultureCast and Movie Meltdown. I am one of your hosts, Chris Dashew of the CultureCast, and I am joined by the host of Movie Meltdown, Brian Renfro. Hello, and I have decided if we're doing these crossover episodes from this point on, I don't know about you, I'm just going to refer to them as Culture Meltdown. Well, that term might have a different meaning. No, I feel like given the two of us involved, that seems about right.

I mean, that's where we're going to end up, isn't it? I mean, it's just culture meltdown. It's all things falling apart and then we're in the middle of it. So that seems about right. Well, speaking of things falling apart and being in the middle of it, on this episode of the CultureCast X Movie Meltdown, we're going to be talking about 2026's most recent film directed by horror auteur darling Zach Krieger.

We're talking about Resident Evil. So the film is written and directed by Zach Krieger. He also shares a co-writing credit with Shea Hatton. The film is based on the video game of the same name, The World of the Video Game, more aptly for those fans of the video game of which I consider myself one for all of you who are throwing your headsets across the room because neither one of us are apparently Resident Evil fans. Trust me, I'm a Resident Evil fan, and we'll get to how much of a Resident Evil fan I am when we talk about the film more specifically.

But the film stars more or less just Austin Abrams as Brian, a man who is tasked with taking a mysterious cooler from... wherever he is, to Raccoon City. We don't know where he's coming from, but he's going to Raccoon City. If you know anything about Resident Evil, you know what Raccoon City means, especially when this film in other parts of the world is being called Resident Evil. Night Zero should give away more or less what this film is about. We will be spoiling the film.

But before we talk about spoilers or specifics of the film, because this is the only time I ever do this anymore, Brian, would you suggest people go and check the film out? The transactional nature of the film part, you know what I mean? I had a couple of people, and most of the time I don't interact with humans in the real world. This is all I do is talk on this show and talk to other geeks in the internets. That's all I do.

But at least twice over the last few days, people have asked if I've seen anything or what I did this weekend. And I'm just like, oh, I saw Resident Evil. And they've both been like, oh, hey, so what's your take on it? Should I go see it? And to both, I said, yeah.

I mean, one was way more a hardcore film person. So that I sort of laid into the reasons why. The other one was way more casual. And even then I was like, if it seems like that's the kind of thing you're into, then yes, you should definitely go check it out. So I would say that to pretty much anybody, like unless you have a problem with like horror and or gore, I don't know who otherwise would not be entertained by this movie.

I feel like if you're asking me or you or someone who watches film, should I see this movie? You are already like slightly amenable. To the idea of watching it. Cause like you said, like someone who's not into horror is not going to be like, should I watch this zombie movie? Like, shh, I mean, or monster zombie movie again, like resident evil is so always been its own thing.

I would say, yes, I would say, yes, go see it. And I would also say that, and you know, this is, this is where I ruffle some feathers and this is where I make my kind of opening salvo here. And you and I can kind of pick it apart. And I'm sure you'll have some kind of statements of this caliber as well. And this on these new movie episodes is really the only time where subjectiveness comes into things.

Because again, like part of this is a transactional question. Like, should you go see a film in theaters? Because unlike Christopher Nolan and his cadre of like cinephile Froot Loops, I think you can watch a movie anywhere. Where you watch a film does not dictate whether or not you enjoy it and it doesn't diminish the creator's intent at all whether or not they say it does is unimportant like in enjoy cinema however wherever because for the longest time there was no other way to see it and so now we're going to deny ourselves the ability to watch it anywhere fuck that just broadly so on these episodes it's a little bit different than a normal episode of the culture cast because normally on the culture cast their movies that are easily rentable or you can find them on YouTube with a lot of the TV movies if we talk about a TV movie But this is a new movie.

And so it's a little bit different, at least in some of the subjectiveness of this, because, you know, people are also here for the hot take, as it were, or our opinion, because that's what, you know, what you want to know about a new movie is whether or not you should go see it. And sometimes that is based on the opinion of the person watching it. So all of that out of the way, I think that this movie is probably my favorite Zack Kreger movie I've seen. Again, those are they're all kind of different. But like this is the one I keep hearing people throw around.

Best video game movie, period, maybe? Question mark? Period or question mark. You decide at home. And I know which side of the line I'm on on that one.

I think I'm on the question mark side because that's a statement that has no further conversation based around it. Like, why is it the best? Most people can't answer that. Because it's the most well-reviewed? Like, that's not a real reason.

I... I don't know if I agree with it being the best video game movie. I think it hasn't been out long enough for me to make that determination. And I've seen it twice, so it's not one of those things where it's like, I don't really know how repeat, repeat, repeat viewings will hold up because I liked Weapons the first time I saw it. And I have not enjoyed it as much in subsequent viewing.

I did not like Barbarian when I saw it, and I still don't like. So, you know, with Resident Evil, my hope is that it is sustained from how I felt the first time I watch it to every other time, or at least my enjoyment might increase. But with the other films that he's done, I have not enjoyed them to begin with, or I have soured on them. As time has gone on. See, I liked pretty much everything he's done.

I've said many times on my show, I like the first half of Barbarian way more than the second. And I still like the second, but it's so its own thing in that first half. And then so it takes a hard turn. It's like a good idea that goes too far. It's like a student film that became more than it should have been, which is exactly what it was.

It was like a short script that he was working off of. And then he expounded it into a bigger idea. The first half of it is so tense and so well put together and so well acted and so well shot so that it holds on to that creepy tension. Then I'm like, this is great. And then once you get to the point of knowing what's going on, you're like, Oh, OK.

Like, it's just it's fine if there's nothing wrong with it. It's a perfectly good horror movie, but it just does things that seem a little more normal. If you're the kind of person that watches a lot of horror movies, you're like, oh, it's one of these. All right, fine. And it's still stylish and kind of creative in the way it does it.

But it's just it's so a normal traditional horror movie from that point on. whereas almost like annoyingly so frankly like yeah i just expected it to continue to do something weird and different and it just kind of it's a little more traditional at that point which again is it's not a problem like most people that are even regular horror fans probably aren't that nitpicky about it i just the bar was already set so high in that first half i just wanted it to kind of keep nailing that move and it just, yeah, it's fine. It's just normal. How did you feel about Weapons? I really like Weapons and I haven't revisited it much, but I saw in theater was kind of blown away and it just sort of goes to show you what a impressive filmmaker he is just kind of based on these three movies because he's doing, especially from the first two to this latest one, it's like it changes gears.

You look at how sort of artsy the way that it handles weapons, whereas it's broken up into pieces. It's not exactly linear. It's it's told in different character perspectives. So it's doing way more of an art house horror movie type of thing versus, OK, now we're handing you this giant property and it's just a roller coaster. It's just it doesn't bother trying to do that stuff.

It doesn't care about doing that stuff. It just takes an entirely different turn. And that Again, it's just kind of impressive that he's pretty versatile as as directing goes. So from that angle, but back to weapons. Yeah, I think it's really well done.

I do like the way that it's kind of that same thing. I think what it was doing in that first half of of that other movie. What the hell is this? Oh, barbarian barbarian. There we go.

In the first half of Barbarian, it just holds on to so well that I feel like the tone and the creepiness that's in that first half of Barbarian is throughout weapons. And then you get that last, you know, 15, 20 minute grand finale. that's just like, all right, well, we came for a show and here's your show. So I think that one just holds up pretty well all the way through. And then, as I said, then we get here and it does an entirely different approach to putting together a horror movie. But I would actually push back on that just a little bit because, and I was thinking about this since I watched Resident Evil and I went back and I rewatched Weapons and Barbarian in preparation for this episode because I wanted to kind of see if I could see the through line.

And it's there. Remember the thing about Barbarian and Weapons that did kind of get leveled against those films is they're weird in the tone, right? The tone is kind of all over the place. And. You know what I will say as someone who has been a fan of Resident Evil since Resident Evil 4 came out on the GameCube and I didn't even have a GameCube and I went and sat and hung out at my friend's place and we played through Resident Evil 4.

I couldn't tell you how many times on his GameCube growing up. And then when it came out for PlayStation 2, I played it incessantly. So I'm not going to say like I'm an old head Resident Evil fan, because I know that there are people out there that would be like, well, I've been a fan since Resident Evil 1. First off, nobody wants to play those games anymore. Tank controls are not fun.

Like, they're just not. I'm sorry. Like... Even if you don't want to play a game that's running and gunning and blowing zombies away like all of the Resident Evil games post for pre seven were. And then essentially they started doing the exact same thing with Village and then with the most recent one.

Like even even if you are someone who's liked those games from the beginning and you want to like hold it against me that I've liked it since the kind of fun one in most people's opinion. Resident Evil's tone has always been fucking weird. It's always been fucking weird. It's always been kind of jokey, tongue-in-cheek. It knows...

I wouldn't say it knows it's a video game, but it acts like it knows more than it's leading on. And, man, I can tell you the one thing this movie nails more than anything else, and I'm not saying it only nails this, but in terms of, like, tone, this is the first time I've watched a video game movie that I feel like gets that it's. A video game movie. Genuinely. And that's...

What are we, like, 30 fucking years into making video game movies now since the Super Mario Bros movie came out? The true classic. I don't mind that movie. I love that movie. That movie's perfectly fine.

That movie gets dragged for the wrong reasons. Yeah. But that's my favorite part, like because it's not like again, it's somebody gave me the name and then went, all right. I mean, you can work in a few things along the way, but you don't really have to do anything at all in the game. And they went, OK, cool.

That was my favorite part. I was just like, this has little to nothing to do with the video games. And that makes it kind of more awesome because now it's just weird for the sake of weird and funny. I don't even think they know how weird it is. And the video game wasn't exactly like the deepest story anyways.

That's the part that cracked me up. It was like reading the reviews about Super Mario Brothers. Like the fans were disappointed. Like what was the story in Mario? Oh, he's looking for Princess Peach in another castle.

That's about it. That's about it. Well, and now we've seen them do it. Like I finally got around to watching those animated wins and I'm like, this is much closer to what they probably wanted 30 years ago. And you know what?

It's fine. Like, but I'm not, I'm not like, it is a me, a Mario. I'm like, yep, that sure is Mario. Look, there's the princess. Like, it's just, I don't know.

They're, they're fine. But like between the two, which would I rather watch? Hell yeah. I'd rather watch the live action movie. I'll watch that right now.

There is something to be said for, especially in this day and age, with how I think sterilized and sanitized films are, there is something to be said for weird filmmaking, still making it through the cracks, especially in big budget films. And this film, Resident Evil, I think it's actually a pretty weird movie. It is a rather weird film. And that's the thing, for all of the things I've said about me not resonating with Zach This is the first film of his where I'm like, I resonate with this completely. And this was made by a fan of Resident Evil.

That's the one thing I do want to say before we kind of talk spoilers is that and I don't know how much of the discourse you saw online, but there was a subsection of people that were dragging this movie before it came out because they were convinced that Craig or wasn't a Resident Evil fan a as if that really matters. I was going to say like that has to be like, that's not normally how J.J. Abrams was a huge fan of Star Wars. And we saw that how that fucking turned out. Same with Rian Johnson.

Like he also made Star Trek and he didn't really care about that. So you can do either, obviously. Right. And I would actually say that that first Star Trek movie is much better than anything he did with Star Wars, which goes to show like, yeah, your investment in things. may or may not influence your ability to do a good job. So mileage may vary.

But I for me, this is my favorite Zack Craig film by a wide margin. It is also a film that I think is and this is the funny part, because I think that Resident Evil has kind of become this in the modern day it is a perfect representation of resident evil the video game in terms of its influence on the industry because there aren't really any bigger horror games than resident evil it's like resident evil and silent hill and that's it and. I still feel like resident evil is the go-to like it's it's the reason everybody else started making all the other horror games It is the original. It's the progenitor. And what's funny is, so rarely are the progenitors still able to hang and bang 36 years later.

Yeah, really. And that's the thing. I mean, Resident Evil 1 came out in the early 90s on PlayStation 1. And it was, you know, there was a lot of things about that game that were really mind-blowing at the time that if you were to watch it now, you would just be like, well, that just seems dorky and dumb. But at the time, they were a big deal.

It's like Mortal Kombat 1. Mortal Kombat. or Mortal Kombat, the original game, not Mortal Kombat 1, but Mortal Kombat, the original game, now it's like, what were people getting so upset about? Like, pixelated sprite blood? Like, compared to what it is now, and that's the thing, like, not every game franchise survived long enough to have. It kind of become. like we were talking about on the last episode with Halloween, a legacy IP.

And Resident Evil is like Halloween. It is kind of part and parcel with the horror genre in the medium that it is part of. I mean, you could say Silent Hill, but I think, like you said, I think it's Resident Evil. It is the high watermark for survival horror games because it kind of created the genre, more or less. And just the style of it as well.

It did something that video games, a few might have been doing a similar style of game. Metal Gear Solid was about the only other one, really. But it also worked those two in. The way that you move around and are looking for what you're looking for and trying to get to where you're going also factored into the horror of it, which you didn't really have before Resident Evil. You didn't worry about oh, am I about to get eaten by a zombie?

That I literally can't see. That I'm literally looking for ammo. And that I can't see because it's waiting in the corner of the screen because it's a static camera. So it's, yeah, it's a different take on just the video game aspect of it at that time, too, that then they have to translate into movies or not, depending on how it goes. Yeah, and so I think for me, like I said, this is the first time I've watched a video game movie that I feel like understands video game logic.

And this could exist within the world of the video game as we've already seen it. I'm not saying like, well, this is a, a resident evil, like, you know, prequel, but it's a prequel to a resident evil timeline that the movie wants to tell, which. It's running simultaneous. Essentially. Yeah.

It's like, I mean, it's, you know, the way I look at it is like a Jurassic park, right? Like the Jurassic park books, uh, there was Jurassic Park and Lost World. Those were not referencing the movie. The second book was influenced by the success of the first movie, sure, but those books were a parallel timeline to the movie timeline of telling something else. And I don't see this any differently.

This movie is just serving as a opening chapter in a retelling of the Raccoon City outbreak story, which is from Resident Evil. Why couldn't we just do video game movies like they do Marvel Cinematic Universe movies where it's like we're just amalgamating things? We don't. And, you know, again, to go back to the Zack Krieger not being a video game fan or Resident Evil more specifically. Oh, well, it's not a Leon movie or it's not a it's like Jesus Christ.

Like, I'm sorry to tell you that. Well, and that's the thing, like for the mainstream audiences, do they even know who those characters are? They probably know what Resident Evil is, but I'm not sure that mainstream knows who Leon S. Kennedy and Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield are. I know who they are.

Just the really old ones. But I mean, there's been a lot of generations of kids that have grown up playing them since then that maybe aren't that tied to those old timey characters anymore. But they know what Resident Evil is and they want to play the game. So, yeah. Yeah.

And yeah, like, you know, seven, seven and eight don't feature any of those legacy characters for the most part in major roles. They're in like minor supporting character roles. Resident Evil 9 is the one that brings Leon back, sure, but at the same time, that was seen as an old head thing. It's for the older fans. Because again, for a lot of, like you said, for a kid playing Resident Evil who's 12 right now, Resident Evil 4 came out when I was your age.

You weren't even alive. It's like watching a silent film for them. Yeah, whatever, old people stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. They're not even going to go play the original Resident Evil four.

They're going to play the like the remake version that came out. A couple of years ago. And that's the point. That's what they want. They want you to engage with these things in the most recent version of it.

And and I think that this movie does a good job at representing the modern interpretation of Resident Evil 4. at least an amalgamation of probably, let's say, seven, eight and nine. So the last three games, the ones that I think in terms of recent games have been very successful. Seven was a massive boon. Eight was immensely successful. Nine is possibly up for game of the year.

I don't know if it will win it. It shouldn't win it. It's fine. But it does some things like bringing back Leon, which is something that everybody wanted if you're a fan of Resident Evil. Is he in this movie?

No. Zach Krieger said he wasn't going to be. This is not that kind of movie. And I think that's the smart thing. Zach Krieger essentially made a movie that someone else can take over now and do something else with and.

Be completely different. Like, okay, now have a James Cameron type come in and make aliens for this universe and have it be about the stars, characters from Resident Evil. Introduce Leon or Chris Redfield. Now that you've gotten... people that have never seen this before to understand what's going on somewhat. This has been successful enough that you could just have literally anybody come in and do this.

You know what I mean? Like broadly, realistically, like that's where I view this film is like, it's a weird thing that this film exists this way, but it could serve as a mold for future things coming out where it's like, we don't necessarily have to tell anyone. the same character's story in every movie, but the universe can be shared. And like, that's not a thing that we've really seen in a lot of these cinematic universes. There's always these like crossover characters, but maybe instead of characters, it's the event that's the crossover. That's the thing that's fueling the entire thing.

And I think they might actually have something on their hands here that. Could be that for horror. You know, we've kind of had takes on that with Conjuring, the Conjuring universe and stuff like that. But Given that this has been successful and well regarded, this could be that now for like horror and horror video games and just video game movies in general. I think this was the best thing he could have done in general.

Like, again, I give him credit for just knowing how to tell a good story, but also just for like the deck stacked against you that he was coming into. Yeah. Then get there and be like, well, I mean, I'm damned if I do, and I'm damned if I don't. If I put in the story you want me to tell, you're going to be mad because I did the same story. If I don't tell it, you're going to be mad because it's not there.

You want these characters. You don't want these characters. Like there's so much nitpicking to it where we get to this and it's like, what if we just throw all that out? And here's what we're going with. It's a vibe.

If you get the Resident Evil vibe, you're invested in this movie. And like whether you've got specific characters, whether you've got a specific scenario that pops up, you know, whatever, who cares? But like once you're that invested in the feel of what he's trying to do, And just the overwhelming like creepiness of it and the way that he shoots it and the way that you're sort of thrown into this ride that like, yeah, that's that's the best thing you could do, because then you don't have to worry about all this other nitpicky stuff that every fanboy out there is going to get into. You're like, yeah, OK, but I'm not doing that. Like, I'm not even bothering with all that.

I've picked my own thing, here's my character, here's the story I'm trying to tell, and I'm gonna follow that till the end of this movie. And that's what he did. And I'm like, that's the best thing he could have. It's surprising that almost like a film being entertaining will get people in the door. A well-made, competent, entertaining film We'll get people to resonate with it and get people invested.

It's not about some fucking IP, you know, holding to the IP like it's mythology, like Dave Filoni at Star Wars. Like you can do something interesting with it. It doesn't have to be like gospel every time we do anything. I'm sorry. This is this year is the perfect example of that, because at least, you know, the big one to punch we had of horror earlier is.

Backrooms was pretty well established. It had its own online fandom for years. But Obsession is just a horror movie. Like it was just a well told basic story that we've kind of seen the core version of it several other times. But it put its own spin on it and it did it stylishly and well done.

And people were like, oh, oh, what is that? Like it's a brand new thing. But like that's all it took was putting together a good story and telling a good tale. And like it brought people in. And so you see, we didn't need pre-existing IP.

We didn't need a bajillion dollar, you know, company backing it. Like all we needed was somebody to do a good thing. story, find good actors, shoot a good movie and audiences discover it. And they're just blown away because we don't, we don't get people doing that anymore. We're so busy focusing on the bigger picture and trying to kill themselves to get this giant name out there and get a million people to show up versus if you do a good enough job, they'll find it on their own. They'll tell people about it all on their own.

You don't need that push. Really? They do the marketing for you. If you make a good movie and then they show up in the theater. It's like they've almost discounted the idea that making a good movie is still a successful way to do things.

I mean, studios, producers, executives at least, it's like they have, from the beginning maybe, never grasped that. It's just like, I've heard those stories back to the golden age of Hollywood. They were just cranking stuff out because they wanted to make money, could care less about the art involved and the directors and storytelling and all of that. They're just like, how do we make a buck? All right, let's do that. which is fine.

I understand it. That's the business. It is essential. You can't make things, especially this expensive, without focusing on that to some extent. But at the same time, it's like, but it's also the other half of it is art.

The other half of it is a bunch of weirdo artists trying to tell a story that maybe you haven't seen before. So it's like you have to at least give that half of the focus, half of the the weight of trying to put together this thing. And anytime they leave that part of it out, you kind of feel it when you're sitting in the, in the seats going, wait, what is, what is it? Why did I pay all this money to come sit here and see this? So, yeah, I don't know.

I feel like that's, that's a lesson. I wish they would learn. We keep seeing this happen from time to time over the years. And then we were thinking, okay, finally, they're going to learn. And then next season comes out and they do the same dumb, stupid stuff they do.

But I don't know. It's frustrating because you keep waiting for them to be like, OK, they're finally going to take the important part of this and give, you know, give the the artist a chance to make what they want to make, to give them freedom to tell the story they want to tell and not, you know. note it to death from studio notes and not come in and cut budgets when they think, you know, this will help you if I take away all your money. Like, so you keep hoping they'll learn the right lesson. And usually they go the entire opposite way. Well, I mean, you mentioned backrooms and obsession.

It seems that the, uh, It seems that the lesson that they took from those is, hey, we've never heard of this thing called YouTube before. It's a it's a thoroughly unmined field of it's a brand new thing. Right. It's like you fucking morons. YouTube has been around for so long.

Like when I read the headline that Steven Spielberg had had either helped invest in the Walton Files, which is something I covered a billion years ago at the beginning of the pandemic on another show, The Scary Stories We Tell podcast. which it's like, it's an analog horror thing on YouTube. When I read that, I was like, this is absurd. Like, you've got to be kidding me. Like there's, there's no universe where the guy who made that ever thought that he'd be doing something like that. And I'm not saying for good or for bad, but like, it's not, it's not genuine.

That's the problem. If it was genuine, it would have been done seven years ago when the guy's content came out. And since it's been over, cause it was, it's been over for a couple of years. You know what I mean? Like, It's now being done because, oh, we know that we can make money, maybe.

And then if we don't make money, it'll be, well, it was these YouTube content creators. Like, no, no, no, they've been successful this whole. Time without your help. Like you're now trying to tie your success to their preexisting success. And that's what the whole problem with a lot of this stuff is, is like preexisting success does not guarantee future success ever, especially not in this industry.

Like, and that's, if someone tells you that they have a guaranteed success rate in a film industry thing, fucking run. Because that's not a thing. Guaranteed success is not a thing. Just because you're a name also doesn't mean you're going to be able to transfer that over into another thing and make it successful. Oh boy, the producers of all those comedies in the mid-2000s sure tried.

From the producers of 40-Year-Old Virgin. What did the producers do on 40-Year-Old Virgin that would make me think they know what they're doing now? Like... what i'm just thinking of youtube people i'm like yeah mr beast is a name but do i want to see him direct a movie no i don't i don't want to see you i want to read a book that he wrote or do i want to engage with him at all fuck no do i want to eat a snack that he made i really don't i i he's gotten so huge and i'm just like i don't i don't get it but that's just me like more power to you you guys enjoy him watch whatever but i'm just like just because he's successful in this corner over here doesn't mean hand him the keys to the kingdom and like, OK, you can do whatever you want now.

Go make a hundred million dollar movie. And I'm just like that. Yeah. Just because you're successful in one area, specifically anywhere on the Internet, doesn't mean it's going to translate. And in fact, usually doesn't.

It's rare that you get something like we've seen this year with all of these guys that started out as independent filmmakers, especially the YouTube guys that like now are just like found a way. And it's because they're smart and talented is like the reason it's, it's not an accident. Like there are plenty of other idiots that they've handed money to that have made terrible stuff. And Nobody talked about those. So it's like it's because we found interesting filmmakers that actually stuck to their guns and made an important story to them and like told what they wanted to tell.

And like, that's why they're good. That's why they're interesting at least. Well, and I think to come back to Resident Evil, you know, we talk about, you know, you being successful elsewhere does not guarantee success here. in another medium and you know or another film even and I would say you know Zach Krieger has been successful in the last two films that he's made and this film is successful immensely successful you know I don't I don't know money wise if it's made as much money as his other two films because his other two films were a lot cheaper than this film you know this is the first zach krieger film that's like a actual i wouldn't say like an actual movie but it's like an actual like creature feature and creature features are not cheap like just by design this is like a studio.

Movie yeah yeah not a weird indie movie this is like a legit studio threw some money at it let's make a movie this isn't an a24 valve yeah yeah Yeah, so Weapons had a budget of $ 38. Million, and Barbarian had a budget of $ 4 million. So their budgets together are still only about half of what the budget of this film is. So a little more than half, but just barely. So that's the crazy part.

This film has double the budget of anything he's worked on up until this point. This is the most expensive thing. And yet what's funny is it does feel like a bigger film than Weapons or Barbarian, But it still feels like a Zack Kregger film. Well, and the most important thing, I think, is as you're saying that it was like, and yeah, usually that's. The kiss of death.

Like, usually you take some cool indie director and then you give them here. Here's a hundred million dollars. Go make this movie. And they're like, oh, how do I? What do I like?

They're not used to that. Like the reason their stuff worked so well when they were young is because they were scrappy and like they. They did what they had to do to make it work. So when you load excess on top of them, they're just like, I don't know how to make movies like this. And we get things that usually don't work when we hand all that money to them.

So it's again like a credit to this filmmaker that he was like, all right, I think I can figure out a way to make this work because I feel like it's one of the more polished movies I've seen that that came from an indie director, they threw a lot of money at it, and it's still not only as functional as a movie, but it looks really good on that level. To be able to up your game and be like, okay, not only am I going to have a well-shot movie, but I also have to factor in all these effects that you've got a little special effects, but mostly practical makeup effects in these other movies. Whereas you get here and it's like it is a ton of visual effects involved. And like you have to factor that in.

And that's enough to like crush an up and coming filmmaker. But like he figured out a way to make it work. And like everything still looks good is the impressive. Well, and he also doesn't do the other thing, which is now that I have a massive budget, I just go ape shit with the effects and I throw effects into every single shot. I mean, that's the thing that Michael Bay and his ilk from the mid 2000s never understood.

You don't have to bombard us with action all the time. Just make the action interesting and well done. And it can be like a quarter of your movie. Nobody expects to go see an action movie and it'd be action from start to finish. That's just where's the plot?

Where's anything? If that's the case, like where is anything other than that? If that's all you're doing and that's I. Can't even focus on those Michael Bay movies. What's my point?

Those Transform movies, you can't even figure out what's going on half the time because he's so busy trying to throw things at the camera, essentially. So frenetic. It's frenetic to the point of seizure-inducing. Seriously. It's too much.

And that's the thing that, again, you walk into this trap of, well, I am a filmmaker who hasn't had access to this budget up until this point, and now I have this massive, again, comparatively... budget but i mean again massive for anybody imagine being given essentially access to 75 million dollars of of assets and funds to do things with to make a film and to kind of hire people and work with people you may have always wanted to work with and i think crager does a good job of balancing making a film like you said that looks great that is well created technically and but is also from an artistic standpoint, from an entertainment standpoint, entertaining and like a worthy entry into a now twice in the last five years rebooted Resident Evil franchise.

Because this is the second reboot in five years. Because I don't know. Did you see Resident Evil? Welcome to Raccoon City? I did not.

I did not hear good things from day one. And I've continued to hear bad things every day since. Well, and that's the crazy part because Johannes Roberts directed Primate, which came out last year and is supposedly amazing. I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. I've heard good things, yeah.

But to your point, Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City, not well regarded at all, which is too bad because I remember in the lead up to it, it kind of sounded interesting, kind of. I don't even remember hearing much about it. Like it was already kind of getting down. bad press or at least word of mouth, maybe before it was out. Certainly as soon as it hit, I was already hearing bad things enough that I didn't know much else about it, except I knew it was an attempt of a reboot. They were bringing in some of those recognizable characters, but immediately it was just being shut down.

And I was like, okay, well, that's not going to be too high on the list. And I still haven't gotten there. Well, and that's, you know, that's the thing. I think obviously for a lot of people that would clearly have been the case is that I don't think it resonated with the fans the way it was supposed to. I, you know, it did not, it did not make a whole lot of money.

It was about a $ 25 million film and it only made about 40, but it was unsuccessful enough that Zach Kreger was brought in to reboot the franchise completely. Almost immediately they were trying to, okay, how do we start over? This isn't working. Yeah. And I think that it's, you know, partially influenced by the fact that we are now living in a time and a place where we are in the days of IP.

I mean, I think everybody acknowledges that, like the IP world that we live in, like everything is fueled by IP. And so if you have a director who directs horror and he's successful at directing horror movies and you're like, look, I've got a list of IPs here and you turn the sheet around and push it towards him, which of those IPs would you like to work on? as a big budget film. If I'm Zach Kreger, you know, I see Resident Evil on the list of things and I'm a Resident Evil fan, which I believe he is based on just seeing this film and the conversations that he has had on camera about the video game. I would probably be drawn to this over Nightmare on Elm Street or Jason or something else because this has, in my opinion, and I think this is the part where we talk about Resident Evil broadly because I want to know your kind of exposure to Resident Evil.

This is also the first time I think Resident Evil has ever had a good movie done. Because those Milla Jovovich films are fine. They're entertaining at times. Yeah, but the best thing Paul W.S. Anderson has ever done, and will ever probably be, is Event Horizon.

Like his video game movie adaptations are fine. But even with that, it's like I would prefer to watch his adaptation of Mortal Kombat because he seems like a pretty supportive husband. I'll give him that boy. Yeah, he's like very boy. Him and Rob Zombie should go have dinner together.

Really? They can see and find over which one of their wives is less talented. I found a way to keep her happy and I still get paid to do it. So let's make some more movies. Keep her happy and employed in both of their cases.

So Brian, what is your exposure to Resident Evil? Films, video games, any of them? Before that, just I will say the way that you described it, that is also what they do with these directors, because I do remember talking to a director in particular and he had made something kind of successful. And whoever the producers at the time were, they were like, hey, we want to reboot some things. Here's a list.

And they gave him a list of all these things. And they were all already sequels. It wasn't really a true reboot, but they're like, you're coming in. You can be six on this one, seven on this one. And he's like, oh, this one only had three.

So I picked the one with the lowest number. So that way I wasn't coming in like on the worst end of a franchise that they just beat the horse to death at that point. So that is literally what they do to these directors as they're up and coming. They're just like, here, here's a list of things we're going to make anyway. Which one do you want to be attached to?

So that is kind of how they throw it at Which is not surprising. Like, you know, like no one is surprised to learn that because that's that's the business part. Yeah, not surprising at all. But you'd think maybe we were just like worst case scenario. No, that really is what they have.

We own all these things. We're not doing a goddamn thing with what of these things do you resonate with? We're going to make some poor bastard do all of these. So which one of these would you like to be poor bastard? Would you want to do the Tetris film?

Or do you want to do Far Cry? I would love to see a perspective sheet that these people were offered of the things they didn't choose. Because those, you know, we know what we know by the things we've seen that have come out. But man, I would love to know, like, what were the other things that Kreger was offered or Kane Parsons? Because isn't Kane Parsons the one that's doing the Texas Chainsaw movie, the reboot?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. And it's like, I wonder what else he was offered. Because you know it wasn't just that. That's just the thing that he wanted.

At the list, they're like, this is Battleship 2. I mean, that's pretty tempting. God damn it. Could you imagine? Yeah, Battleship 2.

Fuck me, yeah. Oh, the Hungry Hungry Hippos film. That's the one I've been really waiting for. That is just begging from the director of Jumanji. Welcome to the jungle.

We bring you Hungry Hungry Hippos. In a world where hippos have taken over. I mean, I've watched this. It's the sad thing. I know.

I'm already kind of on board. I watched the Pelican Brief earlier today and the trailer for it they used. In the corridors of power. And it was just like, man, the trailers back in the day made even the most banal, dumb, boring Julia Roberts movie sound interesting. And now it's like, they couldn't sell me on a battleship to a movie now if they tried.

No matter how many times they throw. Gotta get the right voiceover. Innocent to a film nobody wanted. God. Can we get Rihanna back?

Let's find out. How much money can we throw at her? And Liam Neeson, and is Josh Duhamel doing anything? Probably not. Probably not.

Let's see what we can put together. That's right. So what about Resident Evil for you, though? What's your exposure to Resident Evil? I get points for both. been there from the get-go but i'm not really a gamer and really even that far back kind of wasn't like i played you know your normal uh amount as any dorky kid would but um i was like i had certainly the first half of my life was just bad cheesy pop culture related jobs several of which for Quite a few years there, I was selling video games.

So I remember selling, I believe, the very first Resident Evil. And I definitely remember being there for the launch of 2 because it was a big push. Like 2 was kind of the reboot already of like, oh, now we've got... more characters, more gimmicks, more zombie-type fun. So, like, they really were pushing that release of 2. So I remember being there when that 1-2 push in the pop culture hit with Resident Evil, and, like, you really did see people start to respond to that.

Like, it was... the horror angle that brought in a different group of gamer people. So I was there for that. Did I play it much? Not really. Just enough to be like, oh, okay.

I see what kind of game. It was always just trying to figure out what kind of game it was so I could talk to people and like, oh, this is, here you go. This one's, third person. This one's first person. Like, you know, just your basic rundown of this is how it works.

Now leave me alone, which is the way most retail works. But so yeah, I was exposed to it from early on, but didn't play a ton of it. Kind of ever. I've just seen enough to be like, oh yeah, they're still doing those. Man, they keep cranking these things out.

Well, so your your exposure to it is is mild compared to mine. So I think that, you know, you and I are game play wise. Right. And you and I are coming at this film from two different directions then, which is good, because I think if you're cool, do we want to transition to some spoilers and some kind of like bigger, bigger, specific thoughts about the film? Definitely.

Yeah. Okay. So from here on out, we're spoiling the film. I think Brian and I are both in agreement. You should definitely go check this out.

Fan of Resident Evil or not, I think you will have a good time. I think it's closer to a horror action comedy than it is a horror movie. I think it's... not that much of a horror movie in terms of being scary, quote unquote. But again, I think if you get into a vehicle and drive in this day and age, that's scarier than a movie. But I think it's pretty creepy at points.

It's creepy. That's for sure. I think it establishes a good tone. It does have its share of jump scares, surprisingly. And I didn't get mad at them.

Sometimes they seem cheesy. These were all well-executed. And kind of well-earned for what they were trying to do. I was like, damn it, Zach, he got me on that. And like, rarely do I respond to jump scares, but there's a moment that was like, shit, like I kind of knew it was coming and it still worked.

But I think we both agree, check the film out. So let's talk about the film kind of more specifically. What, I mean, let's just talk about the specifics of the film. Austin Abrams, man, good Lord. Like physical comedy, I know was not really part of weapons.

I mean, he was kind of involved in the part of the movie that I always am just like, every time I watch it, I'm like, what the fuck is this? Like Alden Ehrenreich just punching him in the side of the fucking head will never not just be like a complete what the fuck moment. But- He is playing so against what the type was the last time I saw him. And it's such like an empathetic, interesting kind of like sad sack character that I don't know. He's like, he's perfectly cast in this movie.

And I wouldn't be surprised if we see him in another role like this one. It does totally make use of him because I had seen him and that's the thing I kept going I know I know him and I guess maybe I remembered him from weapons but again it's kind of it's not the same type of character but then going back I was like oh he's been in a ton of other stuff even going back to I was like oh yeah I do kind of remember him in those seasons of The Walking Dead when I was already like. Am I sick of this show yet? So it was right at that point. I remember.

No, I do remember him being in there. So like he's been in a lot of stuff over the last several years. But once you get into it with this character, like he's so like and what I feel like you need at the center of this type of movie. He's so every man. And like, he really does just feel like he's there to represent you as you know, which you kind of want from a video game, really.

So it's like you want to be thrust in the middle of it. And if you get anybody that's too extreme in any direction. Like it kind of distracts from that versus this guy is so like normal dude dealing with regular guy problems. And you get in the middle of this and you're just like now you're along for the ride because you're sort of attached to him because he's he's an endearing character. You don't have to know that much about him immediately.

You're just like, ah, this poor guy. Like, look at him. He's got a crappy job and his girlfriend's knocked up and you don't know what to do about it. And like, he's already just dealing with so much stuff in the first 15 minutes. You're just like, ah, man, I feel for this guy already.

And I'm pretty sure there's a zombie outbreak about to happen. So it's, yeah, it's just a lot that he's thrown into and you're totally on board with him as your, as your lead character. Well, I think that that's the thing that is so smart about this movie versus the other Resident Evil movies that are, again, the iconic characters. And, you know, there's Jill and there's Chris and there's, you know, I guess Leon is probably in those later Resident Evil movies. You can't blame me for not watching whatever it was by the time they ended those movies. mila jovovich films like she's just like it was like six or.

Seven by the time they barely had any i mean not to not to say the same thing we do about most of these movies but i'm like they even if you were a fan of the middle ones because i came in i saw all of them as they went along but i came in in the middle and was like covering him for the show already by that point and it was like we had fun with those like by the time you get to like three and four and five. Like they're so extreme and crazy. They're fun, but at the same time, they barely have anything to do with, even with the first movie had to, you know, it's like, it's so often its own crazy, uh, Jovovich version of the universe that like they have nothing to do with the video game, the first movie.

Like they're just so of their own crazy thing that like, yeah, it's a fun ride too, but it's a very different type of movie. Which, and I think that's the thing, like I don't want to discount those movies. I just haven't seen all of them. I don't remember enjoying them as much as I enjoyed this movie, because they are trafficking in something else, which is these are the competent characters that are the military or military adjacent or cops that are fighting the zombies. And like, again, that's the Chris Redfield.

That's the Leon character. And those are kind of power fantasies in the video. Like the character that austin abrams is portraying in the movie is much closer to the character you portray in resident evil 7 and 8 uh which is ethan winters who is like an everyman in both of those games he's just a guy who's essentially like put upon and in eight he's a little bit less put upon and a little bit more competent than he is in seven but he's i feel like this is where the tone of of this film gets a lot of the tone from specifically are the seven video games seven and eight where it's like this is this is the first time where it was in every man before that it was kind of like always like special agents or cops or whatever and it's like seven and eight is just like a guy it's just a guy whose daughter gets kidnapped in eight and in seven his wife has been missing for like a decade and she sends him like a note in the mail like a tape in the mail that says like don't come looking for me and he goes looking for her he's just like a normal dude I love that this movie is like you know what the best thing about the most recent video games is the fact that the guy at the center of it is just so put upon like it's and that's and that is an age old trope like that's not a The thing that makes this movie, I think, successful is it's a video game movie that's trafficking in a trope that we've seen in all kinds of other films, all kinds of other genres, where it's just the everyman drawn into the world's worst problem.

What it reminded me of towards the end of it, this movie honestly feels a little bit like Die Hard in a way, where it's like wrong place, wrong time. This guy's just not competent enough. He gets to the 99th percentage and then fucks up. But that's what makes it like Resident Evil. That's what makes it fun is like Resident Evil has that twisted sense of humor.

Maybe not as much as this film does in terms of like ending. I don't think a Resident Evil game would ever end this way. Probably not. Probably not. But I mean, you know, in some of the video games, the main characters don't make it all the way to the end.

But it's never like this, where it's like, I mean, again, even in Resident Evil 4, Leon is infected with the plaga, but he's cured of it by the end of the game. He doesn't become a fucking monster. And running around. Or I guess we don't really see what happens. We just see him becoming this giant William Birkin-style eyeball monster, and that's that.

But the put-upon nature is such a thing we've seen in other films. Again, like a. Diehard, or, I mean, name any of those kind of movies where someone's in a location and then invaders or intruders come into that location and take it over. All of the knockoffs of Die Hard, essentially. Right.

Like any Die Hard, like Under Siege, Under Siege 2, like any speed for fuck's sake. Like, again, some of those, the competency of the main character involved is a little bit higher than others. But again, it is still, I mean, Sandra Bullock in that movie is the character in this film. She's just a normal person being tasked with doing an extraordinary thing. Again, this movie doesn't have a happy ending, and I think if you know the video game of Resident Evil, it never could have a happy ending.

That's kind of the point of the movie. I'm not saying there are no stakes in the movie, but if you know the basicest of most basic information about Resident Evil, you know that this movie doesn't have an upbeat ending. It just can't. The whole plot itself is kind of dour. There's always so much to do.

It's a prelude to a fucking zombie outbreak. What do you think is going to happen? It's like the Pennywise TV show. Like, come on, guys. Like, it's a prequel to the movies.

Like, you know, we know what happens in Resident Evil, at least in terms of the Raccoon City outbreak in the video game. What it looks like in the movie, who knows? My hope is we get to see it. But we've seen enough of it already where I'm like, I am invested in what Zack Kreger is interested in telling in the Resident Evil universe. I don't know if he ever does anything else with it.

But this movie is so well done where it's like, I would kind of be bummed out if he doesn't make another one. I don't think he's supposed to. I thought he already said, I've done mine and I'm good. Like, I think he's already moved on and has another project on the works by now. So I do see the studio wanting to continue this.

Or do I think we're going to get another one? Yes. Do I think Zach's going to do it? Unless they just back a truck up to his house and convince him. But even then, he seems pretty set in his ways.

So I don't know. He might be able to hold out on him, but... Before we leave the Austin situation, though, the thing I've heard him described as, and the more I heard, I heard at least a couple different people mention this, and the more it was talked about, I was like, oh no, that's exactly, it's totally right. He's just this franchise's Bruce Campbell. He's just an average dork, he's thrown into this horrific situation, and he gets just pummeled the whole time and like just more terrible things keep he's just it's the worst day ever it just keeps getting worse but every step of the way he survives it every step of the way he keeps like oh man he's definitely almost dead now he's not gonna get out no there he goes he got out of that one so like it's it's very evil dead through your army of darkness of just watching this guy who's just kind of a dork and shouldn't make it this far just continue to to find a way to just kind of luck into up and up survived again.

Okay. Moving on with my mission. So like it definitely has that same sort of a scrappy underdog feel to it that he's just like, well, I'm going to make the best of this terrible, terrible night and try to do the one thing I was tasked to do. And then that that's, that's our guy. We're just, we're, we're, we're knee deep in it with this guy.

And I think that, you know, the Austin Abrams kind of casting is so smart because like, like we've already talked about the thing, if you know him recently, he played so opposite this in weapons and to see like, I, I can see him in weapons as that character, but now the character that I will kind of like come back to in terms of a performance of his that I resonate with is this one, because he just, like you said, he just kind of portrays the every man in a way that yeah, Bruce Campbell is kind of one of the, better comparisons i think yeah because there's not really i guess i'm just trying to think of like horror male protagonists like that's a is that weird that that's a rare thing. Final guys there aren't that many there's a handful but it's not normally that mark pat not was it mark patton from nine run elm street two is that one yeah but that's its own special world that is his own special thing i was thinking the tommy handoff by the time we get to like the sixth when tommy's the main focus on friday the 13th so like we we get a final guy that's the main character of that one for once but other than that yeah it's usually not a not a dude Yeah.

And it's interesting. I mean, obviously, if you've seen the film, Austin Abrams doesn't survive to the end of the movie. I mean, he survives in some capacity. Maybe we don't. Maybe.

Maybe. I'm hoping that monster comes back as the star of the sequel. Well, that's I mean, that's my thing is like I hope that they just build upon this in an interesting way. And they don't. Again, if you want this movie to be alien, make the next movie alien.

Like make it just be, you know, we're going to take this and we're going to ramp it up. And instead of it being man on the street story, it's going to be people being brought in to deal with it or someone on the street who's more competent than the Uber, the glorified Uber drive. And that's the other thing that's very smart. We essentially have a character that people can relate to in a whole host of reasons, one of them being this kind of every man, but the other thing being a Uber driver. a Postmates Uber delivery driver, which is a very common profession for a lot of people, right? And has been for a while.

And I love that this movie utilizes that because we've seen other movies utilize it like that Joe Keery film where he's like killing. People in his car. But I like that this is a believable usage of getting this character into this situation as well. He's like a, you know, he's a medical Uber driver essentially. And it's, you know, double overtime, right? you know, so he's going to get paid more.

Like, you know what? I think anybody can understand that. And most people, when they would take a job like this one would not expect zombies to be fucking, you know, cause again, that's. I think maybe one of the more clever things about this is a plot overall is the fact that when I say like, Oh, and it's a crazy ride, which it is, that could happen on any number of dumb action movies. But the fact that this one's through line is, is just this poor sap trying to do his job.

So like every step of the way, when you think he just chucked that thing into the woods and go take off, he keeps going, all right, well, got to get this thing there and get them to sign this stupid form. Like he just keeps hammering away at this dumb job that like, I guess somebody's life's on the line. I got to go. take this kidney or whatever it is. And like, he just keeps hammering away at it. And you're just, again, you have to kind of admire him.

Like look at that work ethic. Yeah. It's very endearing. Yeah. Most kids these days don't have that kind of work ethic.

Good for you, Brian. But I was delivering, I was delivering antidote to the middle of a zombie apocalypse. You don't even understand. That's the equivalent of, I walked up, I walked up both ways uphill to school in the snow. Like I was doing this in a zombie apocalypse.

Like, okay. I mean, what if he was a pizza delivery guy? He's like, I got to get this pizza to him. It makes it a little less serious at that point. They're hungry.

I mean, they really want this pizza. I got to get it to them. But you can still tie in pizzas at least. So you got to work on that angle. I really like the delivery driver aspect of the movie because I think it just, like we've already alluded to, it just makes his character that much more relatable, likable, and, you know, Again, I'm very empathetic to his character.

I mean, he's wearing that clinical, like the clinical delivery vest the entire movie. Like he, he is just, he's a, like you said, he's a dork. He's a dork in the vein of Ash from Evil Dead. And I think that is a very apt comparison. I mean, Ethan Winters in the video game is an Ash comparative.

He literally gets his hand cut off at one point and he sticks it back on, a la Ash in Evil Dead, like in a kind of grosser way. But still, when you see that in the video game, You can't help but think about the other famous video game slash horror movie icon who gets his hand cut off and sticks a chainsaw on it. Like, it's just one of those things where it's part of the genre language, the filmic language now that, like, again, the movie... in the video game language so much that I think it's just, I don't know, if you watch this movie and your takeaway is Zack Greger's not a Resident Evil fan, my response to someone who says that is like, did you actually watch the movie? Are you a Resident Evil fan?

Are you a video game fan? Like, what? And why? On the one hand, yes, I get it. That's what fans want.

We're always at at war with the fans, specifically Internet based fan fandom is just it's ridiculous. It's out of control and it has way too much power in its own little industry there. But like, to me, that's the thing. I was like, do we need that? Like, I think even Zach said that to himself.

He's like, I don't need to tell these big legendary character stories. We've got that in the games. Like, if you want that, they're already there. What am I going to do that's going to make it any more, you know, endearing to you than you playing it yourself? So you don't need me to do that.

But if I take the general vibe of it, the overall like project, the city, the the mission more or less of, you know, dealing with zombies on the outbreak night, like take that and throw a whole new concept in there and just give you what you want in the overall sense of what's going on in the story. Isn't that better than trying to, you know, be sure and thread the needle on this one specific thing on this guy that you had nothing to do with creating. Like, it's just so catering to all these other people's needs instead of like, he just came up with a story. He's like, this is what I want to tell. And then he does it.

And that's why I think it works is like he's not worried about everybody else's crap. He's just like, I just want to tell this story about this guy on this night. And that's it. And he does it, I think, really well. Well, the question becomes like, why can't I have my own things that I tell?

Why can't I have my own iconography that I create within myself? The framework, it's not like all of a sudden he's introducing things that don't make sense in the framework of Resident Evil as we know it. Like maybe one of the zombies looks a little bit more left for dead than he does Resident Evil. But again, this is kind of a different interpretation of Resident Evil. So if they want to go with a different kind of zombie, I don't see any issue with it.

Like the zombie outbreak and what's causing it is kind of it seems a little bit more amorphous in terms of what it's creating for people to deal with. as opposed to a unified thing. So I find that really interesting as a film watcher, but I could see why someone as a Resident Evil fan would go, well, this isn't the T-Virus or it's not named the T-Virus or it's, you know, whatever. This isn't William Birkin or it's like, okay, but like that still exists. And it's in a bunch. You've got plenty of those games.

Not only do you have plenty, but you have more of that than we will ever get in any other format. Like you can sit and play the video games over and over and over again. to your heart's content, and there are multiple versions of some of these games. Now, why do you need the movies to be a non-playable version of the video game? Like, why? Just like with The Last of Us, that show was okay in the first season, and then in the second season, it just completely shits the bed because it's like, well, we got to we got to tell the story from the video games.

Like, but that was like, it's fine. You could do that. Or you can just do your own thing, which you're now doing anyways. Like you're a third season of the show is coming out and they're doing their own thing. And the video game creators are disavowing the show because it doesn't have anything to do with the third game they're working on.

It's like, if you had just done your own thing from the beginning, you would never have had to disavow anything. And that's the thing about this, like, because this isn't a Leon or a, anybody it's just this guy they don't have to be like well from here on out it's like well there doesn't have to be any this can just be this is effectively now its own thing. Well and the virus part of it because I remember even seeing the game the very first time at first it seemed like okay we're playing up the zombies look it's a horror it's a zombie game but like the more I got into it I was like wait what's this dog like you don't normally have zombie dogs so obviously they started like immediately like What about this?

And then I started seeing all these other characters that came out of the game and like, okay, a lot of these aren't your traditional zombies. So you guys are already doing a much bigger concept here than your basic zombie outbreak. So like from the get go on the game, they're not doing traditional zombie stuff. So it's like, if they have freedom to already do whatever they want on the game, why does he have freedom to do what he wants? Like it's not massively too far off in its own direction, but he's not worried about, you know, I got to work this specific zombie in from this game.

It's like, who cares? Like it's, it's a creature. It's going to kill you. That's all you need to know. Just go with it as a horror movie at that point.

But yeah, I, I was like the game initially wasn't really hard pressed on like the specifics of the creatures because it immediately started sort of bastardizing them by the nature of the virus. So it's like, I like that he just went, oh, well, I can kind of use that to make whatever weird creature I want. And then that's what he does. I'm like, good. That's what we want.

Like, why wouldn't you want to see new, creative, weird looking zombies? Like, that's what we're here for, right? Like, we've already seen the other stuff. Like, give us something new and weird. That'll be fun.

No, we want to just see a T-virus zombie and a nemesis zombie. It's like, I don't need to see any of that. And frankly, I've already seen it. Like, if you want to go see it, you go watch those Paul W.S. Anderson movies.

Like, that's front and center in those movies. For those movies being Mila Jovovich things and Alice kind of being. Her own character... those films. Do still have Chris Redfield and Jill and Claire and all those characters from the video games are represented in some capacity, like a lot of them are. And people still didn't like it.

Right, exactly. It's like, okay. If you've learned anything, don't do what he did. Yeah. Don't do what the fans want is kind of the point.

Like, don't don't do what the fans want broadly, because for the most part, the fans don't know what they want, not because they don't know what they want, but because the fans as a unified body can't make a decision collectively and they shouldn't be expected. Like, and they say these things for different reasons. And to expect that it's all one thing is kind of absurd when the thing is as prolific as. And big as this. This isn't like Buckaroo Banzai where you can only interact with it in like three different ways.

Resident Evil has video games, movies, comic books, toys, all kinds of stuff. Like, there's so much. Like, you could engage with Resident Evil and never play a single fucking video game. Like, never. Ever play a video game.

Yeah. And there's no reason to, like, attach yourself to it that specifically because, like, it's never followed that. Like, every time they would come back with a different movie, they'd kind of do their own weird thing. So it's like, you've never... you've never been attached to it in one specific way. They always bastardized it in each thing that came out.

So it's like, you don't need, I don't know. They just get to, you can't go by the fandom when you're making your decisions on what you want to create as an artist, because I'm like, the fans just like to complain, especially again, I'm mostly Bayesian internet fans at this point. I mean, those are the ones that we need to talk about. They're the vocal fans. Well, and they're the ones that for some of the films over the years have actually made a difference.

And it always ends up worse because you listen to them. And then the next person that comes along or the next film that comes out, they reassess things and they start changing it based on who is whining the loudest on the Internet. And then they change it and then people don't like that either. So I'm like, well, what are you doing? Like now you're just ping ponging back and forth and like catering to whoever complains the most.

And then when you come back this way, then the other half just complains too. So I'm like, you're not getting anywhere listening to the fans. Like just do your own thing. If they don't like it, that's fine. You're allowed to not like stuff.

It's okay. You don't have to make everybody like your stuff because you're never going to be successful in that. Somebody's always going to be upset. Somebody's always going to complain. So you can't base it on that.

You just got to make a good thing and hopefully the people that aren't whiny about it will show up and support you. If you're, if the thing you make resonates with people, that's a success. Yeah. Why does it need to be any more than that? Yeah.

Like, why does it need to be any more than that? Why does it have to be this, this whole thing where it's like, well, if I do this, this, and this, then this, this, and this will happen. Like, you know, why don't you just make a good movie? Why don't you stop worrying about the messaging of the film or all these like, or the, the brand awareness or all these things. Branding sequels already.

And I'm like, you don't know that this one's going to work, especially if you make a crappy movie. So like, Focus on making a good movie and worry about the next step later. Like you can't be worrying about that now and like giving up the good parts of this movie so that maybe two movies out, you can make it all come together. It's like, who cares? Just make a good movie now.

You can worry about that if you even get a chance. Most people don't even get a chance to make another movie. So just be glad you got to make this one. Make it good. Well, and that's I mean, you mentioned it already, like the listening to the fans and kind of kowtowing to what fans want.

And I'm not bad mouthing people here. The people that are doing this, they know who they are and they don't care. Like they they are they are completely unrepentant in their faith. kind of doing of this like shitty behavior of like sitting and complaining on the internet constantly because they complain about anything they complain about the movies then they go and complain about the opinions that people have about the movies because they aren't the opinions that they have like it's just it's never ending right like you've seen it i've seen it i'm sure you've you've rustled people's feathers by saying things about we are that yeah that's what. I was gonna say I can't complain about people having an opinion because this is what we do.

This is why we're here. But again, it's I don't expect that anybody's going to fucking change anything based on what I say. Exactly. I was like the fact that we you know, everybody should have an opinion. And that's what I said.

Like it or don't. be glad if you like it, but like, don't expect anyone to cater to your needs because you don't like it. Like just enjoy. You're not liking it. Go sit at home and be mad about it. If that's what you want to do or better yet, go find something else you do like, or go play the game that you like that they didn't make this movie.

Like, you know, there's plenty of things you can do that are more functional for you as a fan. than just getting on the internet and complaining and expecting people to undo what they did on this last movie because you didn't like it. It's like, if I complain enough, it won't exist anymore. We'll retcon it into not happening. I don't know. They just come up with all this nonsense.

Well, I mean, the Sonic movie kind of showed and the Zack Snyder cut showed that you can complain enough to make a difference. And I think the thing with Sonic, I think the thing with Sonic was justified because the design of Sonic was not great. But if that's the design they wanted to go with, that's their choice and people don't have to watch that movie. Like it's not your movie. Don't worry about it.

But the thing with the Snyder cut is like that is now the kind of bar that I compare all this to. Because you know, the Snyder cut didn't exist. They had to go and like spend hundreds of at least like almost like a, like a hundred million dollars or something. It was a ridiculous amount of money to like make that movie exist. A God awfully exhausting movie.

Like, I don't care if you like the movie, but like comparing the two, like I watched it eventually. And I was just like, oh my god this is just so much longer like all the things. The original one was only an hour and a half brian you didn't want twice to three times as much but all. The things that i remembered about the movie as a whole were in that original movie i'm like when i think back and i'm like oh well this part was actually kind of cool i'm like oh wait that was in the theatrical cut so all this other stuff you did i didn't need which is probably why they didn't need to make it like Every once in a while, you hear a story about like the producers coming in and taking away a director's movie.

And sometimes I'm like, oh, no, I do want to see that. But I'd say more often than not, anytime I see a director's cut, I'm like, I kind of like it better the other way. Like sometimes there's occasionally one that I'm like, OK, this is they shouldn't have taken away, you know, this and this. But like a lot of the times I'll see when they get the chance to throw all this extra stuff in that you didn't want. I'm like, yeah, there's a reason it got trimmed down because it probably needed to get trimmed down.

So maybe there's a happy medium out there somewhere. But I don't know. Sometimes just throwing a whole lot of stuff at something doesn't make it better. It's just longer and more exhausting. More is not always better.

Brian, I don't understand. Yeah, I know. Welcome to America. Yeah, to me it's a little absurd because, you know, us living in a post-Snyderverse, you know, Snyder Cut universe, like, well, they kowtowed to the fans so much, these, like, Yo-Ho fans on the internet that just couldn't leave well enough alone, and then, like, oh, well, it was a success. We got the movie released.

To what end? We all saw it, and it was just more shit. It was just more of the same. Like, it was more of exactly what we thought it was going to be and nothing else, which is exactly why they wanted it, because they just... wanted more of the same. And you know what?

Cool. You like eating raw meat? Eat raw meat all you like. Some of us want to eat it cooked. And it's not my fault that you like to eat raw meat.

That's the problem. It's like, I don't expect other people to do what I want just because I don't like what other people want. We've sat here... as movie critics for 20 years plus collectively between the two of us. And at no point in doing any of this have I expected anyone to look at what I say and go, well, because he said that I should have made a different movie. Like my subjective feelings on a movie are my own.

Well, and what do they get out of it? Like you see everybody gets so up in arms and like usually if they get their way and they either put out a different cut or they change everything for the next movie in the series, Then you get there and number one, half the people are still unhappy about it. And the other half that maybe it is more or less what you want, but I'm like, okay, now what? So your life is perfect now because you got your cut of the movie that you didn't make. Like what happens?

Like you can watch it and what you might watch it again, somewhere down the line. But like, what, what do we get? Like of all the up in arms, crazy whining on the internet. I'm like, what does it change? Like, Life goes on and they go make other movies.

So that would have happened with or without your whining and your special cut and all this stuff. Like, I don't know. Sometimes it just gets to be so much. And I'm like, what are we accomplishing with all of this that we could be putting our energy towards something more functional? Go make a new movie.

That's better than all of these instead of focusing on rehashing some, you know, extra footage that got cut out of something else. Like just, I don't know. There's better ways to be productive with your energy, I feel. Well, and Zach Kreger said as much when because I guess it came out that there was a fair amount of jokes that were cut out of this movie, which, by the way, something we haven't mentioned in all this fairly funny movie. Pretty much.

Yeah. I mean, and again, like Resident Evil, I think even even when it is at its kind of most horror forward facing and not kind of trying to be funny. funny it still is like darkly comedic and so i i think what's interesting is like the idea of like him taking jokes out of the movie is very funny to me because it's like it's already a fairly funny movie how many more jokes could you have taken out well and again. That's that's one of those like yes there is a a time and a place that you can make those sort of adjustments but usually like it's beforehand and like we see even when it comes down to the wire sometimes and they're doing test screenings and they're like cutting things and you know, a week before it's going to hit, you know, nationwide release, like they're still trying to piece together how they want the ending to go.

Like we've seen that a lot of times over the years. And like, sometimes it's the right call. Like, I'm not saying you can't, you know, ever make any adjustments to your movie, but again, it should be the director essentially. And it should be like up before the movie's out. Otherwise you start getting, you know, you're... readjustments after the fact and like crazy nonsense.

Like I'm like, all right, whatever you made your movie, just be done with it now. So like you can make those adjustments. And Zach is a great example of that. Like he listened to people's feedback and like made a better movie because of it. Like, I think if you overdid anything, I think that is what's one of the things that's really good about this is it, it balances everything really nicely that it's not, overly jokey that it takes away from the overall action that's going on.

But also, like I said, I think it's legitimately creepy at a lot of points. And like those two work hand in hand, like the comedy and horror, as we've seen over the years, like can work together really well and make an effective movie. But you got to balance it just right. And like, I think he does that in this movie and it might have been out of whack without those adjustments. So I give him credit for being willing to listen to people, but it's beforehand.

And it was people, you know, in part of the process beforehand, not just people listening. complaining after the fact. So it's like, I appreciate it being part of that structure beforehand that they're like, OK, what do we need to do to make this movie work? And even he's, you know, open minded enough to slice off some of the stuff that he's more well known for. I mean, he's a comedy guy at his core and like he's willing to let some of that go to make it a tighter movie. And I think he did it pretty successfully.

Well, and that's the thing that we, you know, we haven't mentioned. And for those of you that don't know, Zach Krieger got his start with widest kids, you know, which is again, like I would say like internet comedy royalty at this point in terms of like, you know, they, they, they spawned a lot of things, but they're kind of one of the OG internet comedy of that era. Yeah. It's like there's every 10 years or so there was like a new comedy troupe or two or three that came along that kind of defined that generation more or less. But like, this was one of those that also caught on on the internet and like found a new way to get it out there.

And like, rode that as a way to be successful and then also turn it into other types of careers like this. I would say Zack Kreger and Donald Glover have a lot in common in terms of where they got their start versus where they are now. Like Donald Glover has created a lot of great music, some great TV shows, and he's a great actor. And like Zack Kreger, funny actor. I would say better director and writer.

Like he's funny. He has a good sense of comedy, but I think he's a great director. And I think he's an even better writer. Like that's the thing that gets lost here is like he helped write this script. I mean, he doesn't share the sole writing credit, which I think for me, it's interesting because the other two things that he's made feel more like a him thing than this.

And I think that this benefits from having someone else's hand involved. I was kind of surprised just the Shea Hatton, I guess is the other writer. And like, he's like back and forth. Like there's sometimes when I see it coming together and I'm like, okay, that's a good person to pair him up with. So like, all of the solid action and like forward moving.

Like, I feel like that's the guy who's knocking out all your John Wicks. You know, your John Wicks sequels. Oh yeah, and Ballerina and Zack Snyder stuff. And I'm like, so that's the stuff. No, that's the ones that worried me.

Then I looked down the list. I'm like, wait, what is he doing all this Zack Snyder stuff? I haven't seen those movies though. They might have good action scenes. I don't know.

I've seen. Okay, okay. I think I've seen Rebel Moon Part Two, The Stargiver. I saw Goldberg. Again, here's a good example.

I saw both the original release cuts of Rebel Moon 1 and 2. Did not go back for the extra four hour Zack Snyder of it all. For both of them, for God's sakes. I haven't seen Army of Thieves, which is the like spinoff prequel thing he did. But I have seen Army of the Dead.

I enjoy Army of the Dead more than most people. I do not pretend like it's a good movie. It's an entertaining action movie. You can barely even call it horror, even though it is wall to wall zombies. But like it is action way before it's horror.

So it was those that kind of concerned me as I was like I was looking into it before I even went to see the movie. I'm just like, OK, you know, you can't question the John Wick movies like know how to make an action movie like those things. And he came in from like three, four ballerinas. So like he knows how to do that stuff. But yeah, he was on a lot of that Zack Snyder stuff that I was like, oh, writing is not the strong suit on those movies.

So that concerned me a little bit. So I think it probably also helped to have Zack there to counterbalance whatever bad things came out of those other previous silly action movies. And like you've got somebody who knows how to tell a good story like Zach does to sort of counterbalance what he's doing. So again, I think it ended up being a really good pairing between the two. Well, and I think you hit right upon it, which is this film has a lot of really interesting action.

I wouldn't say it's like, you know, high stakes action in a way, but it's it's action done in a way where the lead character can't be proficient. Like it's part of the part of the film. Part of the joy of the film is knowing that he's not proficient. He is not an expert at guns. He is not an expert at a lot of things.

What he's good at is tenacity, I guess, or delivering things. But he's not just luck. He accidentally lives a lot of times. Yeah, he's not he's not proficient as a as a user of firearms or parkour or any of the things that he's like asked to do in the movie. And yet, like you said, he just happens to be lucky and survives.

And I think that that's, again, like, that's where a lot of the comedy comes from, for me, is those scenes with action having the tone of a Zack Kreger movie. And that's what's so interesting, is the tone of a Zack Kreger movie, I think, actually works better here than it does in Weapons and Barbarian, because... action and comedy, and then for some extent, action and horror or comedy and horror. I think if you have all three in this kind of like action, comedy, horror mix, I think it just, I think they balance each other out a little bit better than trying to just balance the two against one another. Like action kind of makes it a little easier, like an aliens again, like it kind of maybe gets lost in all of it is the problem.

I would say to your point, this movie doesn't lose a lot of the horror, thankfully, but it does. It's not as scary as it could be because it is kind of sort of an action comedy. Like, I think it depends on the scene. Like, I think especially in the first half of it, like before he gets to the city, I feel like a lot of that stuff is like really creepy. And a lot of it's just the way it's shot.

And like your basic again points to him for just being a good director, having a good cinematographer, because like the the the use of what you can't see in some of those early scenes is so well done, like whether it's from the get go of him driving and you can barely see the road. And, you know, he's barely paying attention to the road. So you're like you're waiting for you. Like, you know, the zombies coming out, you know, he's going to hit somebody. We've seen it in the trailer anyway.

But even then, just the way that it's shot, you're like, oh, God, here it comes. Like you can see the bad situation in front of him, literally. And then like so you get the usage of like him in the car and pretty much all you can see is the headlights and everything else is dark around them. Or you get once he's out of the car and like, as soon as he's away from that little area where the headlights are, like everything disappears into black and you don't, and like your zombie disappears and you're like, I, she was just here. Where, where the hell did she go?

And like, that is like unnerving because if you're again, especially with an every man like this, like you put yourself in that position, you're just like, well, shit, what do you do? Like when you're standing there and you're just like, that lady was just here and now she's not. And I'm pretty sure she's going to try to eat me in a second. So, you know, there's that moment of like, well, if you're him, like, what do you do in this scenario? I think that's part of what makes this movie work that well.

Again, I think it's not only because of that every man's sense, but maybe even more so with the video game aspect of like, you're in that first person, like you're the one going, okay, what do I do in this scenario? Do I run back to the house? Do I get back in the car? Like you've got that decision you have to make, which I think always works really well with horror. Like sometimes in action, it's a little harder to pull that off because they're all, again, parkour experts with firearms training.

But like in horror, it's a lot of times people that don't know what the hell they're doing. So like every horror movie that throws out that option of like, oh, well, what do you do in this scenario? Like that engages you in the story really well. And I think this, certainly in that aspect of it, I think it's, it really comes together and it just sort of makes you engrossed in what's going on in the movie itself. Is that what the hell would I do in this scenario?

So that comes into play. Well, and I also think like like you alluded to, the beginning of the movie does such a good job at setting the stakes. And then they just keep ratcheting up the further the movie goes on that by the end of it, it is like, well, now this is a world ending thing. And like now we have to like stop this kind of like zombie outbreak from from happening. And it's, you know, this just think about what would happen if this thing took over the world.

And it's like, well, we know that that's what's going to happen. So or at least in some capacity, it's going to affect Raccoon City. And, you know, because, again, in the video games, depending on what version, there's there's a lot of kind of tied up in what happens in Raccoon City for the rest of kind of the world of Resident Evil. But what's interesting is it does start so small. And I think that's something that is, again, very indicative of Resident Evil.

The video games always start really small and really kind of not quiet, but as quiet as a Resident Evil game can be. I mean, I think of Resident Evil 4, I think of Resident Evil 7, I think of Resident Evil 8, where they all are kind of quiet and reserved, especially even 9 with the non-Leon storyline where you're just going around the kind of sanitarium with a flashlight and a gun. The film emulates kind of even the progression of a Resident Evil game, where it starts out really small and by the end of it, you've got a machine gun and you're trying to kill all these zombies and do all this crazy stuff. And even. Even the movie understands that and tries to do that and tries to emulate that.

And I really I appreciated that about the movie, that the movie, again, seems like it's being made by someone who appreciates Resident Evil, not just as the story, but also the vibe and the tone and the story progression and the way that Resident Evil as a media character. Property conducts itself. And I think that, again, Zack Kreger does a really good job, I think, at giving not just a introduction to Resident Evil as a movie franchise, but also, I think, Resident Evil as a property. I think if you watch this movie, one of the things you're probably... they're hoping you take away from it at the end is, like, will you go, if you have a video game system and buy a Resident Evil game. And play it?

Like, will that be how you engage with this further? And I think that's probably part of the hope for anybody who made this movie is... we would like for people to engage with Resident Evil further, which is why it's not just one Resident Evil thing. It's kind of taking all of the franchise as a whole and boiling it down into, you know, a tone, a vibe, a sense. Of being in place. It reminds me a lot of Fallout.

Like, and again, Zach Cherry is in this movie, so, you know, he's in Fallout as well. But it reminds me of Fallout, and it's like, we're not necessarily telling a story from the video game. We're telling a story set in the universe of the video. Which is more what people want, really. Or I would think people want.

What little I've seen of, you know, again, I'm just watching the show. So, like, I'm mostly engrossed in that. And I'm just like, especially something like that. The world is so rich that, like, it feels like that's where you want to invest your time and then not worry about the specifics of the characters. just take your characters that you create and then place them in this world. And like, that's kind of what we're doing in this movie too.

Well, I think the issue maybe with Fallout is Fallout, I think is a prequel or a kind of in universe of the video games. I don't think Resident Evil is in the universe. I think this is like its own thing. So I think maybe, and again, like not to say like, well, Fallout fans kind of have a justification, but it's like, I guess I'm like, well, it reminds me a little bit of, to speak to JJ Abrams again, J.J. Abrams was Star Trek.

He didn't have to put his Star Trek movies in the Star Trek, like, normal universe. He could have just rebooted the goddamn movies and then not had it be like, well, this is the timelines interacting through time travel and alternate universes. Like, nobody asked for that, dude. Like, you, you, unless it was like a studio directive, but like, you made that the case. I don't think Resident Evil, this movie, takes place in any universe.

Fallout takes place in that, in the video game universe. So I think that's you know, another kind of leg up that this has over most things, which is it's seemingly just telling the intro to a story we already know, but whatever the next thing is, is hopefully going to be still kind of its own thing. Maybe it'll have a character from the video game in it, but I don't want to see them make something that's like, well, then we're just adapting resident evil too. It's like, but why? Like, yeah.

If I want to engage with that story, I'll go engage with that story. Why is that medium not good enough? You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. This has shown us that you can just present the universe and then it's your own little sandbox here.

You've got all the basic things that you like from the Resident Evil universe right here. Plus, we've thrown in some other parts of it that like you can use moving forward. You don't have to. You can go you could bring in some more from the video games, but not stick to the story so much. But like you've got the whole thing is just your sandbox to play in now.

So like he did his own crazy story in this one. And then, like, again, if we're going, which as much money as it's made, I'm sure we're going into a sequel. Like, yeah, then hand it off and, like, let somebody else do their own crazy story and, like, connect it as much as you want to, but not that much. Like, you don't need it, obviously. As we've seen, this is, like, its own freestanding story.

So, like, you can tell those. You don't have to be tied down to the IP. Like, you can just... Use it for its overall, you know, universe more or less, and then just tell your own story. And that seems to work pretty well based on this movie.

If you were to make a sequel to this movie and you wanted it to be as Resident Evil as possible, you would have it be someone following the trail that this dude is leaving with the fish. and them trying to figure out where the fuck he's going because they're trying to intercept it for one reason or another and you have it built right into this where it's again hewing close to what we've already seen but doing something different within, again, the framework of a thing that has already existed. And that wouldn't be untoward in the Resident Evil universe because it is so very common to have things redone, retreaded, or re-contextualized in a different way because that's a lot of what Resident Evil does.

Later games end up retconning earlier games. And again, I'm just basing this off of video game logic that the movie is existing within. There are padlocks in this movie. that they cannot break through with guns. That is a video game thing. I'm surprised the character was able to swim.

If there was swimming in this movie, he may not have just died when it happened. I love video games of many years where jumping into the water is just you die and you respawn back on the land. Like, you know, he even I don't know how you feel about it, but I think maybe mentioning video games was a bit too much. But at the same time, like he doesn't exist. In a world without video games.

That's unreasonable. Well, I talked about this with Dr. Perlmutter on the last episode when we talked about the dog stars, where it's like these characters exist in 2035. You're telling me in the years leading up to the apocalypse, there weren't apocalyptic fiction that these characters in this universe saw? none right like that's not a thing like what so it's it's hard i guess in my mind it's like it's hard for me to believe that again like i don't know no one says zombie in this movie so maybe that's not a thing but also they're not really traditional yeah right they're not really they're zombies the way zombies are in resident evil which is to say you know they're mutated human beings caused mutations caused by X, Y, Z, one, two, three reason, depending on the game.

So and pretty quickly we get to the very untraditional by the time he kills the two people in the house, which is one of the first times we see zombies getting killed. It already immediately starts morphing into this other thing that you're like, oh, this is not a normal zombie. Like this is definitely not a normal zombie movie because look at what's going on here. This is a whole different weird thing that's taken over. And like it's it's its own entity more or less.

It's not just one zombie trying to eat your brains. Like it is its own thing trying to be a bigger thing. Literally as people just start like weaving themselves together into this rolling ball of corpses that like. That is different than most of your zombie movies. So like it definitely sits in a different place just because of how weird that aspect of it is.

And again, that's good. It brings something different to the table that like if you're looking for a normal zombie movie, It brings that aspect of the game in that's different from most of your zombie movies. And isn't that zombie the kind of diffused at the neck, two-bodied zombie? Isn't that zombie just kind of comedic in its presentation? Like after that initial scene where it creeps out of the house, which is really effective.

When you see it like rolling at them, it's like it's kind of goofy. like intentionally very silly yeah it's silly and again like that's the thing about resident evil that silent hill is not as as silly resident evil has always kind of i said metal gear solid is kind of the comparative like metal gear solid i think is a silly video game like it's it's serious but But it's very tongue in cheek and it's like inspired by big action movies of the 80s. But it has like a Kojima paranoia of the 90s flair to it that kind of then went into some other weirdo directions that only he could have come up with. And Resident Evil is that same thing. Like Resident Evil is very weird. It is not just a zombie video game.

Maybe it was to begin with. But even then, like, there were plenty of zombie video games. Something about Resident Evil clearly resonated with people more than it just being the original. Myspace is not really a thing anymore. The original does not mean that it will exist in perpetuitum in its form.

It should. Yeah, sure. Okay. I'm trying to post on my page right now. You know what I mean?

Like, it's, you know, we can always go back and fix things and change things and say that this is the way it was supposed to be from the get-go. And, you know, oh, well, Resident Evil was never, you know, it was never an action, you know, video game. That was kind of the criticism leveled against it at four, which, you know, again, four is more or less critically acclaimed as a video game. It's one of the best video games ever made. It's one of my favorite video games.

I go back and replay it every couple of years and I don't have as much time as I used to to play. campaign style video games anymore but it's one that I will still go back and replay because it's just it's nostalgic but it is great like it is worth revisiting and it's because it its tone is so different than the first three but it is exactly the tone of the first three which is It is its own weird, idiosyncratic thing. And it's just, if you've played Resident Evil, you get it. The characters are kind of weird and bombastic. The stakes are kind of start small. And end big.

The third act of the game is always kind of a letdown. The first act ends up being the best part. Like there's a lot of those things that are just carry throughs through a lot of the Resident Evils and certain people resonate with certain characters and certain people resonate with other characters. But the tone of the video game, I think, is why people resonate with Resident Evil and the movie nails it in a way that I don't really think a video game movie has nailed the tone of the source material the way this has. I think the only thing I've seen that might be close and I haven't seen it yet and it's not out yet.

But that Street Fighter movie looks like it might be the next closest thing because it looks fucking dumb. But Street Fighter's storyline is not meant to be taken seriously. There's minimal storyline. Right. It's yeah.

Like the story has come since the introduction of Mortal Kombat, creating a storyline in its game and all the other kind of legacy video game like fighting video games have been like, well, now we have to do a serious or a story at all. And Street Fighter has tried to do it as well, but Street Fighter's goofy as fuck. There's a guy who can roll into a ball and electrocute people, and they're all shooting fireballs out of their hands, and there's a guy with a literal flat top, like an absurd flat top. That's being turned into a popcorn bucket of all things. Like the video game tone is hard to replicate in a movie because it almost feels antithetical to making not a serious movie, but a movie at all.

Because it's like, I guess as video game players, we're more ready to accept fun because that's factored into what we're doing. Sometimes the idea of fun is lost to filmmakers and they just don't care about a movie being entertaining or, or engaging and it's being made for other completely different reasons which I'm not saying is a good or bad thing I'm just saying that's the case and that's kind of a constant with video games if it's not fun people aren't going to play it like if a game's not fun I'm not playing it and most people aren't playing it because I will go play something that is fun and this movie replicates that sense of quote fun unquote and I will say this is the first time in a film where they've done first person and it actually works And it actually feels akin to how it would be used in a video game.

See, that's the thing that I think it does so well is not only does it like work for gaming fans and like you've listed off all these specific things that tie in. If you're a fan of the game, the thing that I think is so impressive is they've done so many different video game in title movies. And then the movie comes out and really it's like once you get to almost all of those, like I can't imagine most of the time people going to see those video game movies that aren't already a fan of the game. Whereas this totally works on its own. Like if you've never played a Resident Evil game, you've never even like, you didn't even know that there was a video game.

I don't know what world you came from, but like you just landed on this planet and they're like, Hey, you know what zombies are, right? We're going to go see this movie. Like you at least kind of understand horror more or less. Like, it works 100% on its own, telling this specific story that has the tie-ins to the game, but it's not necessary. You don't have to be a fan of the game to appreciate the movie.

The movie totally stands on its own as a solid horror movie, as a good action story that's being told, and then just the comedic moments hold up. So everything is functional and not so tied to the original source material that it all falls apart if you take one or the other out of it. It's still a totally works as its own separate thing while at the same time having all these great tie-ins for fans. And I think what's also really smart on Zach Krieger's part is making the first, let's say, third of the film and the second and third acts of the film so different, but the first act of the film is the most traditional. Horror movie of any of the parts.

And I think that that's also very smart because, again, like you just alluded to, if the people that are coming to see this aren't Resident Evil fans and. Aren't aware of where. where the franchise goes in terms of weird shit that they start introducing. Cause again, yes, in this movie, it's the T virus effectively, and it's growing organs or something to that effect in, you know, and in the early video games, it is pretty much just a virus. But by the time we get to like video game nine and, It's been a plague style parasite. It's been a.

Werewolf type thing, but also a plague type parasite. It's been a genetically engineered disease from the parasite. Like it's been all kinds of different things. And so what's interesting is like, even in the video game, like the video game always kind of starts out in a way that feels familiar if you're a fan of horror. and the movie does that same thing i was like it's just the zombies coming into a house which is right out of night of the living dead like that's that's like as time is old a memoriam of zombie movies that's the og zombie movie and this movie pays i don't think lip service but it pays homage to night of the living dead as well which is i think if you're talking zombie movies zombie cinema It's one of the originals, and it's not the kind of American gold standard for zombie movies.

And this movie lives within that world as well, because the opening of this movie is. Right out of Night of the Living Dead. Guy in a house, by himself, isolated, being attacked by zombies. Guy is not an expert at using guns, and that is made readily apparent here. not because he says it over and over. I mean, he does say it, but it's also apparent just by the way he conducts himself and the way he holds himself and his inability to use them and any of that.

It's like, okay, this is something that is so recognizable for a whole bunch of... It's leaning into all kinds of different things. And again, it's Zack Kreger just being so smart. Like you said, if you're not familiar with Resident Evil... He eases you into it in this movie.

And by the end of the movie, it does kind of go. Off the rail. But it's earned. It's 100% earned by the time we get to the umbrella vaccine kind of lab at the top of that building. Which again, so video game.

My God, we gotta get to the 28th floor. You gotta cross the. it's like, again, like what's funny is it, it, the video game conventions are organically in the bones of this movie. You could not remove the video game conventions of this movie. And this movie makes sense because it doesn't hit you over the head. Right.

But because some things just don't make any sense without understanding it's a video game convention, but the movie does a good enough job at making you understand where it's coming from. That like you just said, it's not beating you over the head with it. It's it's introducing it organically which is just again zach crager i think is just such a smart writer in that regard and that he gets what the people who watch and want who the people who play these games he understands what they want from a movie because he is one of those people because it. Could very easily just be like so mission oriented like a video game they're like okay this is the next thing i have to get this i have to go in the house and find this and they're they're video game movies that do that.

But there's just basic movies that do that now. That that's just like such an easy way of storytelling is just like, okay, fetch quest, go get this, do this, then you gotta get to that. Fringer things season five, dude. That's like that whole season. Yeah.

But like those are so... clunky in the way they put that together versus you get to this and it's like it's happening like you said it's built into it in a way that you can't take it out but at the same time it never really feels like that like unless you're a geek enough to step back and be like oh wait okay yeah they're doing this and this and this but within the moment while you're watching the movie you don't feel it hitting you over the head with those things it's just like well yeah he needs this and then he is supposed to go there because that's where you know it follows through with the plot equally as much as sort of the the gimmick of this is how video games work, too. Well, and that's why I was going to say, like, when we talk about, like, let's talk about a film like Princess Bride for a moment, right?

Like, that's a fantasy film. It is, like, a film that has a real-world aspect to it, but then there's a fantasy film aspect to it. And those two juxtaposition of tones, like, they never cross over because they... They cannot cross over. And yet it's acceptable for that tone in that movie, the part of the movie that's kind of the book part to be so fantastical.

It's like, well, we just accept it as fantasy kind of logic. I think it's OK for a movie to operate within an internal logic that's akin to something like a video game. Because I think that that is probably the right way to make a video game is just have it cue to the tone of the thing that it's based on or the conventions of the thing that's the medium that it's coming from and not have to belabor the point. When it all depends on who's in charge. That's what you always run into in any of these, because I've seen that with, again, not even video game movies, just like horror movies over the years that like that's something that's very lore and very specifics of how whatever are we fighting zombies are we fighting vampires werewolves like what are the rules everything's based on like how do the rules affect in this movie in this world that we're in and like you'll see people that don't pay attention to that and like the movie falls apart like within the the story that they're telling, they like are just sort of sloppy in the way that it's structured.

And like it, you're, you're sitting there noticing as an audience where you're like, no, this is not how that should go versus you get something like this. And it's like, it's, it's all in the structuring, but much like the, the reason princess bride works, it's like they built this framework of like, this is, this is how it's built. This is the storytelling aspect overall, the overarching part of it. And within then we're going to cut back and forth to this. And then when we're in the fantasy part, there are no rules because he's reading a book.

Anything's fair game. We can do whatever silly thing we want and it can have sort of a modern sensibility because it's coming from that place that you set up in the structure. And that's what we get here, too, is like we build this the structure of like this is how the world that we're in works. This we were introduced with this guy. And this guy's he's not learning it because he's like already living in this world.

But things have gone out of control this night. So as things that are being introduced into this world, all of a sudden, thanks to the virus, he's been he's being introduced to those. And then he's sort of learning and we're learning as we go. And it's building this structure that by the time you get to the end and it's these huge stakes and it's this giant structure. physical structure that he's fighting his way through and all these different types of weird zombies he has to fight his way past and like all of that makes sense because it was structured so carefully in the beginning there and it all leads to that point and it's again it's it's who you give the movie to and if they know what they're.

Doing And I don't want to say like this movie is just a bunch of set pieces strung together, but. It kind of is. And it works. And it works. And again, like, and I think what's weird is again, like it, it goes to the video game sensibility that the movie lives with an If you are willing to be cognizant of this thing that you're making is another thing, and that other thing has its own rules that it is defined by, why can you not just do that in another medium and just, again, not belabor the point, but just do it?

And that's what this movie, I think, makes the case for doing. I have not seen a video game movie that does this. That goes, you know what? We're just going to live within video game logic. Even Detective Pikachu was trying to make like this is the real world.

Like, oh, my God. Like, come fucking come on. Like, this is just like, you know what? That's heightened realism. And it just is.

It just is. Like, I don't know. It's just like it's it. You know, to go back to the Shea Hatton, it does kind of have that John Wick sensibility to it where like John Wick exists with an action movie world. Its own crazy John Wick world.

Right, like the logic and reality kind of exist in a weird out of whackness. It's very stylized. What's wrong with that? Like nothing at all. Nothing.

That's why they made like five of those movies now. Right. And that's why they've made a million Resident Evils because that sensibility is what people want. When things go bad, we want them to get worse and worse and worse and worse. Because at some point it's just like ridiculous.

And it's kind of become absurd. I mean, that's the thing with John Wick. I don't remember which of those movies where he's just running through the city and everybody in the city is trying to kill him. I think every movie. Is that all of them?

I've seen only the first and second one and I barely remember the second one. So I'm just like, is that all those movies are? Is him just like running around a city? I mean, definitely by two and three. Yeah.

They like put the word out and like suddenly somehow everyone in the city is also like a hit man woman. Everyone sees that. That's me. Everyone has like a walkie talkie as they're like, Oh wait, got a new person to go kill. Hold on.

I'll be right back. I'll leave my, newspaper guy job to go murder this dude and i'll come back in a minute but like yeah it it's it would be silly if it wasn't so damn entertaining like again it's how you structure it you're immersed in this world this is the world we've built for you in these movies you either accept that or you're in the wrong movie you know it's like if it's well done you're fine with it it It can be silly in the wrong movie in the wrong hands. But like, if you know what you're doing and you build this universe and you immerse the characters in it and it's cool in this world, everything makes sense, then you don't have these problems with it. It's how you structure. Well, and I think you also really hit upon something else, which is embracing it completely and not being embarrassed that this is a video game thing.

I mean, there's that other kind of weird aspect of adapting something that has a pre-existing fan base, which is like, well, I'm embarrassed to be adapting a video game into a movie. Like, well, then don't do it. Like, you're not the right person to be doing this if you're not interested in video games to begin with. Like, I, you know, Richard Haddam, who's a friend of the show, we co-host a show on Weirding Way Media together called Never Tell Me the Oz, which is a Harrison Ford podcast. He talks about being in the writer's room for.

DC Titans and some of the people in there were not comic book fans. And that's a good thing because you do need a balance of people to balance out tone and stuff. And I think, you know, know, maybe Shea Haddon is not a video game fan at all. Maybe he's not a fan of Resident Evil at all. And I think that helps because it helps make the tone, again, more palatable for everybody. which I think is kind of when we talk about something like this, like there are things of the Resident Evil video game that don't need to be in the movie that are not necessary in the movie.

And that's because they kind of only work in a video. And again, bringing someone else in who has a different sensibility as opposed to being like Zack Kreger is a fan, I think helps create a tone that is more approachable to start with. But as the movie goes on, like we've said, it ramps up more and more and more to by the end, you're like, OK, I'm fully on board with this. movie and where it's gone but i don't think it could start like the next film can 100 but i think this film like it did such a great job of really ratcheting up the insanity in a in an interesting kind of drop you know drop drop drop metered out way because it doesn't overwhelm you with the craziness of what's going on immediately like it's oh you're in a house with zombies and then all is in the tunnel with the zombies and that's that that's like It's always ramping up.

It's always escalating. And that, again, is like so video game of the film. It's that video game logic. And, you know, why is he walking through this dark tunnel? Like, because it's a video game.

Because it's creepy. Right, because it's still... Exactly. Like, it works on a whole bunch of different levels. But ultimately, if you're basing this off of a video game, it's intentional audience manipulation.

Because if you're playing a video game, you're trying to creep the player out. If you're making a movie... You're trying to creep the audience out. That's intentional manipulation. And that's a good thing.

When it's successful, it doesn't bother. When it's unsuccessful, it's exactly that. It's unsuccessful. And man, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Well, that's yeah.

I mean, that's you're using it for the horror or for the video game aspect. But it's exactly the same with horror. It's like, why is he walking in that dark room? Like, because it's a horror movie, because this is what we do in any horror movie. Once again, there's rules to horror movies too just like the making video games aspect and it's like you once you're a fan of that like you you throw the regular world rules out the window because you're like well now we're in a horror world and like this is the kind of thing dumb people do this these dumb kids are gonna go do drugs and have sex because that's what they do in these movies and that's why they're going to die in a minute like it's the same thing here why would you walk down that dark tunnel there that's probably loaded with zombies because it's a horror movie and that's why we're here so it it works because you're already kind of invested in the world as a whole if you're a fan of horror or video games or whatever you've shown up for and again not It's not always successful.

This is just such a good example on both of those planes right there. Well, and, you know, I think it's interesting. You know, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but this is now being called like the most successful video game movie of all time in terms of like critically. That is so specific of a qualifier that it's like, okay, I mean, video game movies were never really a genre that were well regarded anyways. It's only been in the last five years that video game movies have kind of moved out of being ghettoized by the film community as like lesser films.

Just an embarrassment. Yeah. Like, oh, look at those Uwe Boll films. Like what a fucking bozo he is. Like, I mean, again, I know nothing about him as a person.

He seems kind of like one of those people that likes to get a rise out of people intentionally. So whatever, bro, be my guest. That's all on you. But like he was making video game films and they were kind of like, yeah, just kind of put in a corner somewhere and like, you know, pat on the head like they're stupid. And again, people spent time, effort and money to make those movies.

Not everybody who was making those movies was making them for the right reasons. But there had to have been some people that were. And it's just like, why after the Super Mario Brothers movie were video game movies regaled to, or yeah, I guess not regaled, but like, why were they put in such a low position by everyone? Because one movie was bad. Well, and again, not even bad.

Because so many of them were, really. Now that's like, what, just failure after failure? Double Dragon was one film too many? I mean, nobody was like, man, I can't wait to go see Doom because. You saw the trailer of all people.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Like they brought in real actors for that one. But I was like, it's still not going to save it if you just don't care. And you're just like, I don't know, swing the camera around and it'll be first person, right? Actors who are hilariously bigger now than they were then.

So yeah, I was like, that's another one of those, like you can go down that list of those early video game movies and it's like all they were banking on was the name recognition. Like they didn't care about the story. Half the time you're lucky if you could piece together a story out of that. So like I look back like fondly on the Mario Brothers movie because it had a story. It made no sense and it had nothing to do with the video games, but it 100% had its own crazy story it was telling.

So like you get to some of those other knockoff, whatever video game they could get the IP for and slap together. And like, I think that was the thing is like, nobody really put any work into him for so long. I mean, the craft people did, they still built sets and, you know, people showed up for craft services, but like, as far as the crafting a good movie, like nobody really, again, because it was so ghettoized that people were just like, well, there's no point in putting any effort into this. Nobody's going to like it anyway. Like, Nobody's going to have any respect for it.

You know, it might make money the opening weekend, but nobody's going to like put this up for best picture at the end of the year. So why bother? It's like. I feel like a lot of those early movies, like just nobody set the bar very high. So why would we try to do anything any different?

And then you get to like the last few years of like, even, even like you said, even on, you know, your premier cable stations are just like, Oh, well we can take this and make a entire series out of it. And then like that raised the bar and like, You just get people sort of expanding on what you can do with a video game property. And like we finally reached that point. But it took a lot of years and a lot of people not caring about those movies to get to that point. Do you know what number out of the first 10 Resident Evil was in terms of video game adaptations?

Super Mario being number one, Double Dragon hilariously being number two. Do you know where Resident Evil is in that list of out of 10? It's insane how low it is. No, but I mean... Again, they were still just kind of... wading into that territory that far back.

It's the film. That's fucking crazy. And it's pretty far removed even there. Like I remember watching that first one and just going, I mean, it's got aspects of it. Sure.

But like, it was still pretty different than what, you know, you were expecting if you were a big video game person. So it's like, they're already sort of veering off in a weird direction, even on the first one. And that's, The most focused, maybe. As they go on, they just get crazier and more over-the-top anyway, so. They kind of lose sight of Resident Evil after, I think, three.

Yeah, pretty quick. The second one is Raccoon City with Nemesis and everything, and that's kind of still Resident Evil-y, but by the time they get to the third one, it's just something else entirely. Which is why I think that's when I started kind of liking them, because I didn't see three initially. I went back and watched three, I think, after I'd seen the fourth one, and it's like the post-apocalyptic world at that point. It's like the closest to a Mad Max or something, because they're out in the desert- They've walled themselves off.

Zombies are all surrounding them trying to kill them. So like it's way more zombie apocalypse movie than anything Resident Evil. And then by four, it just becomes a crazy action movie and adds all these extra sci-fi elements to it. So like there's again, there's way more fun stuff in the bigger, dumber ones that come later. But like it totally veers way far away from the video game storyline.

Yeah, it's and that's the thing. It's like it set the tone poorly for adapting Resident Evil because it did what I think so many of those early video game movies, and I mean, frankly, a lot of the video game movies even up until recently did, which is, I mean, again, just adapt the video game. Like, adapt the story from the video game. Don't do anything else. Don't make it something else.

Don't have characters that no one has ever seen before. It has to be characters from the video game. You can't have Anyone else like why they had to do that? For so long, I will never understand. Because why keep doing it if it's not successful?

Especially that far back, because there wasn't even, like, the internet sounding board yet. Like, that far back, nobody was even complaining. They just didn't go see half of them because the trailer looked bad. But, like, you didn't even have the backlash that far back. So it's weird that they just kept hammering away at that idea for no real reason other than, I guess, they were just like, well, we assume this is what everybody wants out of these.

And. I guess, and that's kind of the part I wanted to speak to specifically as a Resident Evil fan. I don't really know what I wanted from a Resident Evil movie. Because all I wanted is something that, you know, I went into this movie wanting it to be made by somebody who liked Resident Evil. That's it.

I just wanted it to feel like it was made by somebody who understood how... fucking weird the game sees what are you buying what are you selling like all the weird shit from the video game that is just weird flat out strange odd bizarre idiosyncratic in a way that can only be described as you know overwhelmingly Japanese or overwhelmingly Japanese like some of it's just like Japanese and American culture mixing in a way that kind of yields weird thing and that has kind of been the case a lot of the time when you have American style things being transposed through the lens of other cultures I mean look to go back to the Metal Gear Solid of it all Metal Gear Solid is an American action film through the lens of a Japanese action film fan Resident Evil is is a American horror film through the lens of a Japanese horror fan.

Like it's again, it's the meeting of the Japanese and American culture that makes these kind of weird things, but not weird in a bad way. It's just weird because like those two kind of cultures are not opposed to one another, but they're very different. And the sensibilities are very different, especially when it comes to comedy and humor and and quirky comedy. And I think a lot of that comes out in Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil and Monster Hunter and a whole host of other video game franchises that are Japanese creators looking at American culture and crafting their own thing. And that's what Resident Evil is.

It is a mixing of two very distinct things. And the movie. still feels like it. It has that sensibility of a Japanese video game, but again, it is very clearly being shot in Prague. I mean, Colorado. Well, that's on the comedy thing.

That's another thing I wanted to get to is like, I think what works so well on that front is also the real world of it where, because we're already dealing with, you know, very every man character, but like, it's also the way he approaches these like insane things that are going on in front of him. And once again, it's kind of that, well, what do you do when that, when, when this is completely impossible to, And yet you're watching it happen in front of you. Like, how do you react? And I think, number one, like, Austin does such a good job of just totally, you totally buy this character being thrown in the middle of this and how he reacts. And usually how he reacts is, what the hell is this?

He's just he's like overwhelmed and kind of flabbergasted, but also like just sort of narrating his own insane reaction to it. Like he's just he handles it so real world that like I think you wouldn't get that from a lot of other movies. I think that's also part of why so many of those other attempts at early video game movies fail, because it's the same thing with coming into filmmaking. As you said, when they were like ghettoize it like they also can't crack a smile because they don't want you to think this isn't serious. Right.

So if you're coming into making a movie, oh, we have to do this is the the real story. This is like real world seriousness. And I'm like, yeah, but look what's going on. This is insane. So like you're. character needs to respond in a realistic way which is what the hell is this like you know it needs to have that real world response of like i don't understand this this is ridiculous why is it happening in front of me versus everyone being dead serious all the time because you're trying to make a serious movie.

And that's the i guess that the other thing you know to go back to the fallout of it all fallout's tone as a show is very similar to the sh the tone of the video games, at least the more reasonable, I would say all of them, I guess, broadly, which is like darkly comedic and kind of weird in its own idiosyncratic way. And I think that the thing that makes that show so good is that it embraces the weirdness of the video game. It doesn't try to like, like you just said, normalize it. Because I think normalizing it robs these things of their charm and what makes them interesting. If I want anything, I think it was a zombie movie.

Yeah. Like if I want to watch a zombie movie, I would just watch a zombie movie. Yeah. If I want to watch a weird movie. With zombies that is very clearly Resident Evil and like Resident Evil in tone, this movie, I think now checks that box.

It does. I think this is the highest compliment you can give this movie. This movie feels like a Resident Evil video game. You're not getting to play it, but there are shots in this movie that are directly from the video game in terms of right over the shoulder. And the character's readying himself and doing something and he's walking and it's, you know, he's right in the center of the frame and then he's on the left-hand side of the frame and it like shifts to the, the camera shifts to the right.

Like if he were aiming, like that's done so well that it's like this, this just feels like a video. But it doesn't, again, it doesn't hit you over the head with it, with the, the, noticing that that's what they're doing because I've seen video game movies try to do that and try to replicate something that's so video game where this one it's just again it's just stylish enough it's just him being a. a good director that like knows how to shoot this, that still makes it an engaging scene as a, as a moviegoer, but is just close enough to what you're used to seeing in your POV shot on the video game too, that it like it works from both angles. And like that again is such a feat that he has done in this, in this movie that somehow both of these things are kind of coming in at a 10 when you expected a free on both of them, you know?

I'm surprised that he did a first person shot in this movie like several times. I'm shocked because, again, like it got so maligned in that doom that I was like, I don't think anyone will ever do that again because they really dragged it in the doom movie. But then I watch this movie and I see how you can do it well. Yeah. It just takes not belaboring the point.

You don't beat it to death and have it be five minutes of your movie. You have it be like a cutaway shot. And you could compare that to like a Paul Greengrass, even if you're talking about like someone doing kind of these. interesting movements with the camera on weapons or on guns or in a character's like close-up like he was doing that long before someone else was trying to you know adapt it into something else but like this movie again lives in that world of utilizing the camera in an interesting way that is trying to ape something else without ripping it off completely and making it so noticeable that it's distracting I mean it's it's So ripping it off at this point is kind of not really a great way of putting it.

It's just, is this distracting? Is this making me think of the other thing as opposed to this? Which it doesn't. Like it uses it like as effective filmmaking techniques because he will also like just sort of whip the camera around as a reveal sometimes of like him being over here, not knowing what's going to be happening on this side. And the camera itself will like quickly move over as he's essentially looking over there and be like, Oh God.

So like, one of the most effective things. And I think one of the creepiest shots is when he's in the house and like, he hears the, the woman now getting back up out of the car that just starts booking towards the house. Like she is just moving so fast. And like, that is unnerving because you're just like, whoa, what? Okay.

And you know, what's happening. So again, it's playing with this tension and it's playing with like, you know, how ridiculously fast she's moving and, You know, you're in the house and she knows you're in the house. She's coming at you. She's coming over that fence. You know how long it's going to take for her to get in here and up the stairs and to the room.

And like, it's like he's playing with that timing and the camera angle of her coming at the house. And like, it's again, it's just filmmaking like at its finest because you're, you're, it's using the way that he shoots it and the way that he moves the camera to In conjunction with the character and the timing and the tension and it all just comes together. That was one of my favorite scenes is just that moment of her coming at the house. And he knows he's got a limited amount of time to find the shells for the shotgun or put together some sort of plan before she dies. comes barreling up the stairs because she's going to take his head off. And like that, somebody's got to get their head taken off one or the other.

So we have to see who's it going to be. And I think you just mentioned something that is so smart by Zack Krieger is just his usage of the camera and the way that it moves. It's just it's he's a seasoned filmmaker at this point. This is his third film, but he has not been doing this for 40 years. The usage of the camera in this film is so, again, well done and well thought out that it's it's by it feels like it's by someone who's been doing this much longer than he is.

But I think, again, he just understands the conventions of the narrative and the expectations of the audience and kind of what he would want clearly as a fan of the video game that like it just it works. It just works over and over again. These kind of little moments of kind of video game infusion into the movie where there's shots that mimic the video game or angles that mimic the video game or the camera. Acts like it would in a video game. I mean, that's probably the way of putting it is the camera in this movie acts like a camera in a video game does in a lot of ways.

Like it's there are scenes that the camera in the video game and the camera in this movie are one for one in how they'd be presenting it if you were playing this or. If you were watching. Yeah, it's just effective. And he knows that. And like, he just went all in on that.

And that's why those scenes work as well as they do. Yeah, it's again, I think for me, this is probably my favorite horror movie of the year so far because it's the one I was not expecting the least out of. But, you know, we we talked last week on the Rob Zombie Halloween 2 episode about giving the guy who's been successful elsewhere in something else, a big name franchise and letting him go and see what happened. This movie, man. is a stunning example of how you can do that. And I'm not saying Rob Zombie's Halloween wasn't, but Rob Zombie's Halloween made a shitload of money.

It was successful. It was immensely successful. Second one, not so much. And again, obviously there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes with Zombie that affected his ability to properly finish that trilogy. But the reasons that Krieger got off this film and this ip is the same reason rob zombie got offered the ip for halloween he made something else that was successful namely a indie horror film that made tons of money and then secondly you know crager comes around and makes a horror film that's so well regarded it wins one of the actresses.

An oscar yeah well you know This also, like, again, you were listing some of the other people along those lines. We didn't mention the Jordan Peele of it all. I mean, that's just become sort of a move now of finding these guys that are that are well-versed in comedy and they're just giving them a chance to make film. And then they've all kind of, or at least many of them are sort of also drawn to horror in particular. So like handing these guys that just learn how to tell a story and, and use humor as part of the storytelling.

I think that also just kind of makes you a better storyteller because if you got people that can only tell this like dead serious drama story, it like it, it just adds so much to it and adds another level of realism if you also know how to work in comedy. So like you get somebody like Jordan Peele who did that same thing and sort of came into it with a different, from a different perspective, but found a way to sort of make it work as, as a comedic tone that then works even better as a horror tone. So it's, yeah, I don't know. I just thought that was interesting just working in as some of these, you know, this last 15, 20 years of up-and-coming filmmakers. But then I was also going to see what you thought about the cast, because again, majority of it is all just Austin on his own.

But you mentioned the Zach Cherry of it all, but I was really excited with the little... almost a cameo Paul, Paul Walter Hauser. Because wrestling's own Paul Walter Hauser. He's just, well, I mean, he's just, he's been an actor for years and like, he's, he's not what you would expect to become the actor that he has. I mean, he's led films now and like he, he's not what would have at one point been your, you know, leading man, Marvel money, baby. And like, he's just becomes a, because he's such a good actor.

Like they, they realize it and we're like, Oh, well he can also do this. So like they keep giving him different things. And then on top of that, he's like crazy and decides to do wrestling. So like, like actually do wrestling, like real wrestling, actually like, as I would say, like, you know, David Arquette was doing wrestling there for a while. He's doing wrestling as much or more than David Arquette is like, it's like, Taking metal chairs upside the head level of wrestling.

Yeah. The old school backyard version of wrestling. Getting broke, getting, getting, getting read the hard way. And like, yeah, like take, yeah, it's, it's, I don't know, like Paul Wolterhauser has, he's in a lot of ways, like for a while there, it was McConaughey and then it was Pedro Pascal. Yeah.

And now it feels like Paul Walter Hauser. It's just like in everything, but not in, again, not in a bad way. I think they can kind of overdo it. And, you know, to mention Pedro Pascal and Paul Walter Hauser in the same breath, they were both in the Fantastic Four film together. But look at the different places they turned up in.

No, no kidding. Well, I was going to say, like, talk about getting cut out of a movie more or less entirely. Well, and then who shows up as the fancy, handsome leading man? And who's a mole man forced to live underground? I know, right?

It's a very different place than that movie. Yeah. But to speak to Paul Walter Hauser in this film, like he's great. He's not, you know, he's not given much to do. I don't think anyone other than Austin Abrams has really given much to do, but I think him and Austin Abrams have the most interesting chemistry of any of the characters because it's the most prolonged I would say it's like 15 you know 15 minutes it's it's one of the shorter it's one of the longer set pieces in the film with other characters but it's one of the shorter set pieces in the film in terms of what's actually going on yeah yeah But I do love that Paul Walter House also plays like an NPC because he's like, go, come on, go.

We need you to go. It's like, shut up, dude. Like, but get out of the car when I'm done checking my inventory. He has so much personality. That's I think if you would have just given it to some random. bit player that you hired for cheap like yeah no you're those same those same lines might be there but you just be like whatever like you totally forget about that oh yeah totally be.

In the next resident evil as this kind of character because it totally works it's like dickhead pseudo middle management, bureaucrat asshole. Like who was like, you know, you go do it, you go do it. Don't make me do it. And it's like, Oh God, that can be its own joke too. It's like, he just keeps getting worked into a wall.

Just put like a weird, funny mustache on him this time. And next time he has a silly haircut, like you just, you make him a different ridiculous character each time. And each time he's there to say stupid things and get himself killed first and foremost. Exposition film. You go do that and go down that alley there.

But even from the beginning, he was just like, shoot him. Just shoot him. It's the kind of stuff that given to the wrong actor, it would just be silly. But he just adds so much personality to it because... He's a legitimately good actor that like it's it was just he brought so much fun to that little middle section that if they both would have been the same as the cop military lady like she was fine but like she only worked because she. was opposite of him.

And like, she didn't have to say hardly anything to counterbalance his silly over the top behavior the whole time they're in the car together. I was just kind of disappointed that she is not in the movie more. Callie Reese is, she's so good in that, was it like the fourth season of True Detective that I was like, oh, like, oh, she's in this movie. And then she's like, not really. Not for much.

Not for much now. And again, you know, it works because, you know, she is recognizable and she does die rather ignominiously. But so what? Like it works. It's a it's a it's a video game movie.

Like, you know, I don't you know, it it's totally OK to introduce a character and then kill them off immediately like that. And then. In horror terms, too. It's just like, yeah, go down that dark alley over there. We'll see you in a minute.

You might as well. I'll be right back. Yeah, exactly. You could disappear. And in horror movie terms, yeah, it's fine.

She's dead. We all know that. Did you notice? Go check. And there she is.

Did you notice the Zack Kreger cameo in the film? Or did you hear the Zack Kreger cameo in the film? Not the spousal one, because we get one of those, too. It's a, no, it's a, uh, it's, it's, he is the intercom man that talks to Austin Abrams to get him to come up to the lab. And I was like, I remember when I was watching it, I was like, that totally sounds like Zach Kreger.

And then when I, when I looked on Wikipedia, I was like, oh, cause it was like, it is him. Like, which is funny. Cause I was like, it doesn't sound like Zach Cherry. Zach Cherry has a very distinguished like way of talking. Like it's very distinguishable.

Like I was like, but that sounds like Zach Kreger is like, nope, that is that. Yeah, that is him. No, mine, I was looking down the list there and I was like, wait, Sarah Paxton's in this? Right. Sarah Paxton's awesome.

And then I was like, oh no. Bradley Cooper in this movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's the pregnant girlfriend voice on the phone that you can barely hear is voiced by Sarah Paxton, which I don't think I knew until this point is his wife. Yeah, that's, what is it? Who's the chick that's married to Mike Flanagan?

She's in all of his stuff. Like, it's, you know. That's the best way to get a job, as we've seen from Mila. God, good God in heaven. Like, what's funny is Cherry Moon Zombie takes all the flack, but we've just given, like, three more examples of people that are, you know, kind of like.

I mean, we didn't even dig into Underworld. What do you want, man? This is what you do. Dear God. Oh, Lord.

But I thought that was fun, though, because this one is so minor, you don't even know it's her. So it's not like, once again, not hitting you over the head. It's only a joke when you look way down the list on IMDb and go, oh, wait, that was her? So, like, that's a fun little inside joke there. But, like...

Again, I kind of wish she was in it. She's a great actress and has done some really cool parts. So I wouldn't have any problem with her showing up. But again, it's like you don't overplay your hand. Who am I, Rob Zombie?

So he just finds a nice way to tuck her in there where you don't really notice it so much. It's not 2011 anymore. I love the innkeepers. Man, you know what's crazy? Sarah Paxton at one point was in one of those horror movies.

One of those slow burn, elevated horror movies. And now she's playing the girl. She's amazing in innkeepers. I love her in innkeepers. Yeah, that movie's great.

But it's such a slow burn movie. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, End Keepers is great. It's just wild.

Like she's kind of come full circle. Like now she's married to the guy who's making all of like the elevated horror movies of a certain like ilk. It's very, it's very ironic, I guess. Cause you know, End Keepers is, what is that? Ty West?

Yeah, I think so. Who's gone on to make, Ty West isn't the one that was making all the Godzilla movies. That's Adam Wingard. Yeah. Wingard made those.

Ty West is still knocking some out, but like. No, he's the one who made Maxine. Okay. Right. i enjoyed that for what it is i know he's the one who's directing the johnny depp christmas carol movie yeah that's the thing that makes no sense to me i i i heard that and went okay i want to most of the time i want to see whatever ty west is working on i don't know on this one man like i am so sick of johnny depp in general and like how many times do i need to see a christmas carol like the keep every five years knocking out another version of it over and over again. So, yeah, I don't know.

They don't think you're going to get sick of a story from 1875. I guess not. They've only done one or two times. Right, only a handful of adaptations that they've ever done of one of the most popular pieces of literature of all time. Well, and again, it's it's it's johnny depp which you know makes it a big budget you know movie which is just ty west just wanted his own godzilla movie he wanted his own big monster movie he got it with johnny depp and sam i mean you know good on zach crager for being given a big budget and not turning it into like a a complete CGI slop fest.

The thing I did want to say, I'm not, I think the CGI at the end of the movie is not great when it's him as the monster. It also is silly in a way that you're fine with by that point because it's become so big and crazy and we've just gone through a nursery filled with zombie babies and blood bags. So by the time we get there, I'm like, yes, it's this silly now. Just go to town with your giant eyeball monster. I guess I would have preferred it be a practical effect.

I mean, I always went practical. But I'm saying, like, I'm saying, I think if you're trying to make it silly and kind of give it a little bit of, like, comedy, unintentional or, you know, otherwise, why not just have it be a practical effect? I think a practical effect would have worked just that little bit better, right? Then we're back to Evil Dead 2. It's like, then deliver over the top, crazy, physical, practical effects.

Which I think they kind of do. Like, he's ripping people's arms off. Yeah. Which is Zach Cherry with the desk, which I think is always a very funny way to kill someone. But I think like, I don't know.

I found the end of the film CGI to be, I mean, again, I don't know when this happened, but all of a sudden CGI just looks bad now. It just, I don't know. I guess there's just so much of it. Or maybe the engines have just started to run on that cheaper level and now they just don't upgrade. They're just like, yeah, just go ahead and use that same one we've been using on these last five or ten movies.

He looks plastic. He looks plastic. It's like an action figure. Frankly, it looks like a video game. Again, it looked silly, but at that point I was just kind of willing to go with it because the movie had taken a I mean, that's fair.

I will, I will give it that like it, it does kind of earn it, but I will say like, again, as someone who loves good practical. Effects, I would have preferred a practical. Oh yeah. I definitely would have preferred it. And, and was kind of like, I was wondering how far into it, it was going to go, but it, again, it does as much as it can for like, it's asking a lot.

Like there's only so much you can do with practical effects when you need a giant ball made of rolling bodies. Like there's, there's a lot that's going to take to make some of that stuff happen practically versus the ease and probably an expensiveness of switching to CG. So again, who knows how much control he had over that by the end of it anyway, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like it's like a lot of other CGI things like you look at it, you look at it for too long and it just starts to it just starts to look a little uncanny and it starts to look a little fakey. And that's fine.

I they don't again, they do kind of the jaws. They don't give us a real great look at it at any point. Like we never really see it all in one shot until right at the end of the movie. And that's the point where I'm like, I probably could have done without that. But that's the way you ended the movie.

So what am I like? What am I going to do? What do I say to that? But it is one of those things where by the end of the movie, I'm like, I don't need to see him in full shot because it looks kind of dorky. But again, it is like you said, it's based off of a video game design that is video gamey and kind of goofy in its own right.

So I guess I'm not too terribly surprised. And it does earn it by the end. It's just I don't know. I'm always going to I'm always going to bring up wanting practical effects. Always, always.

And I will always take that over the alternative. But again, I think there's they keep setting the bar so much higher in what they're asking for movies to do now that like there's some things I don't know, which I've seen some pretty amazing things be done practically over the years. So like I don't ever say it's impossible, but like. it gets so time consuming and so like financially overwhelming to keep trying to do that. When, you know, studios are just like, ah, just knock it out with CG. Who cares?

Like, right. So it's gotta be such a fight to get anything made practically anymore that like it's, yeah, I'm, I'm impressed when I see stuff that is still, you know, as practical as it can be. So yeah, I'm just, there's so much of it now. It's hard to, to, I barely acknowledge it on that level anymore. I'm like, yes, of course that's where we end up.

So like, I, I'm kind of used to it. I don't say that. I like that. I'm kind of used to it, but eventually, you know, we just have to accept that's what movies look like sometimes. Yeah.

Which is amazing. I mean, again, to say like, you know, it, like I said, it just kind of all CGI kind of looks bad now in general. Like I don't, I don't understand, but it just kind of does like, think about like fucking Marvel stuff from this year, like that Punisher TV show. It, That's Marvel. They have essentially an infinite wallet.

And that's what passes for good. Like, come on. Like, for real? This is a big budget studio thing. It's like, what are we doing here?

Again, it's just like, I think we're at the point where it's like, we can't do anything about it. Like, it's just, we can't be impressed anymore by the quality of CGI. Because there's nothing to be impressed by. When AI exists, like, I guess, I don't know. It's still amazing to me, though, that in 1993, they could put together... maybe the best fake version of these things we'll ever see.

Cause I still watch the stuff from, from Jurassic park. And I'm just like, how, how is it this good? Like how I'm with you. I watched Jurassic park two weeks ago and I thought the same thing. I was like, how is this still the bar?

Yeah. I mean, that was the first time too, essentially. I mean, they toyed with it and other things, but the first full on. engrossed in the whole movie this is our focus this is how we're gonna do it and yet it's so damn good looking like it's just amazing i'm still impressed with. That and there aren't a lot of things that still look that good to this day no. The fact that i mean rarely can you look back at any effects from 93 and be like yep that holds up but i'm like damned if it doesn't in that movie like So.

So much of Jurassic Park holds up, and it's because of the quality of the CGI. And that's the thing. As I'm sitting here talking about the CGI in a movie that came out a week ago, it doesn't look as good as Jurassic Park. What the hell are we doing? That's the part that's crazy.

That's why I was like, I think maybe it's just different engines now. And they just... They were putting so much time and effort and care into that version because they didn't know how to do it yet. They were learning it and creating it that they put that much time and effort into it. Whereas now it's just a program.

It's just you hit some keys and like that can be made probably pretty damn quickly comparatively. So. think it's just a cheaper, faster engine that they have running now that throws these things together that like nobody puts that kind of time and effort in. And that's why it's going to look like that now. Yeah, I don't think using CGI means it's going to look good or anything else. The people behind it still have to make something.

They still have to engage in the creation of it. And there are people that don't care. Like every other job in the world, there are people that just don't care. And sometimes you hire people that aren't going to do a good job and you've spent the money and you can't do anything about it. And it is what it is.

And I'm assuming that there are plenty of projects where that happens and the filmmaker just goes, all right, like we can't. This is the movie I'm making. Like, what are you going to do? Yeah, we can't pay for any more. So we got to use what we've got.

And I'm not saying this is one of those films, but I've just I guess I'm not super engaged with CGI anymore. And that's I think that's I think that's just kind of always been the case as I've done this podcast. But I think as I've gotten older, if I'm going to look at something like that, I'll just go look at a video game. I think I've just gotten numb to it now. Like, I just expect it from super big budget stuff, so when I see it, like, sometimes other people will be complaining about it, and I'm just like, oh, yeah, I mean, I guess...

It's just fucking noise now. Like, I just shrug it off. I'm just like, yeah, well, that's what we were gonna go see. Like, you saw the trailer, right? Like, it was in the trailer, too, so this is what we're watching now.

Like, I don't... Again, it's not an excuse, but I still wanna see new movies, so, like, I'm gonna end up seeing a lot of CG now. Like, it's just... I try to accept what it is I have to do. Like I can complain a good amount and I do on the internet.

But yeah, I mean, eventually you just have to kind of come to terms with it as much as you have to and like watch the movies you want to watch. And I think also this film doesn't use it like, to the point where it becomes obnoxious. And I think some of it looks pretty good. The earlier stuff, I feel like the bodies attaching to each other look pretty damn good. And I'm like, I don't know how much of that they were factoring in, because I'm assuming there's a body there to start with, but obviously the tentacles moving around, I'm guessing, is all CG.

So the more it gets engrossed in that world, the harder and harder it is to do anything that's not a lot of CG. Yeah. And I think you're right. Like for the CGI that they use for the most part, I think it's great. I think, you know, again, we we don't see a lot of super duper mutated stuff like we would in the video game yet, because I think, again, like you got to get the audience to that point where they are going to accept that this dude looks like that by the end of the movie.

Because again, like that's, that's not a traditional zombie design. Like this is very known. This is Resident Evil. Like it is its own thing. Like if you can't tell what the giant eyeballs and the claws and the tentacles and all the weird shit, that's a Resident Evil thing.

Like that's just part and parcel with that area of the world of Resident Evil. Like Resident Evil one, two, and three, I think are kind of the games that feature the tentacles and the eyeballs. Once we get to four, it's kind of like parasites and other kind of ways of having the virus present itself. And again, people wanted to be like, well, this isn't a Resident Evil thing. What's the creature design then?

What is it inspired by, if not that? It's more the thing than anything else. Which is exactly what Resident Evil was inspired by. It's body horror. It's Carpenter's The Thing, which...

It basically is just, it creates whatever the hell sort of creature it wants to be in that moment so that it can finish absorbing people and come back to a human form. So, like, it really doesn't care what it looks like. That's why it looks to be the weirdest freaking things you've ever seen, because it doesn't need to stay that way. It's just transitional, where this, I don't know, again, the virus itself is transitional, I suppose, because it's turning them into whatever weird mutated thing it needs to be, so. And again, it's fun because we get something that's very different from just another zombie movie.

It's got, again, a tone and a feel that other zombie movies have not really done. A lot of the time we get a zombie movie. It's groups of people or people in a situated location. And this does kind of have a forward momentum to it that feels like a video game. It changes scenery rather often.

Like a video game does like it. I don't know. I'm excited to see what Zack Kreger does beyond this. And I like you said, he's not coming back to this, but I'm also excited to see what someone else does with this because this is not the end of this. This has made far too much money and it will continue to make money when it's released international because I think international audiences will resonate with it as well because Resident Evil is a international franchise.

It is a franchise started by a Japanese video game company that is as popular in Japan, if not more so than it is here. And I'm sure it will make a buku bucks over there, too, because it's a it's a great movie that employs comedic physical comedy, which is it's language lists like that does not need a language to be understood, like physical comedy breaks down the barriers of language pretty easily. And a lot of the. Film's success is the physical comedy of Austin Abrams. I won't be surprised if he is in more comedic thing or if someone puts him in something more overtly comedic in this part of his career.

That's the thing. As you were describing the way he was operating earlier and how good he is at doing this, I'm trying to distance myself from this movie and go... I could very easily see like the next big thing for him being like a rom-com because he's still 100% super charming and like, look at him. So I'm like, you're gonna cast him against some super hot girl. And like, you could have so much chemistry if you get the right person and put together a fun rom-com and like, he can obviously do comedy.

So like, I could very easily see that being one of the next things he does. And I think he would be great at it because again, like you said, he's so charming in this movie. He's so just kind of effortlessly charming. He's like a less creepy Caleb Landry Jones. Which is to say, I don't know if Caleb Landry Jones is creepy in person or not, or as a human being, but Caleb Landry Jones plays creepy characters and stuff.

And Austin Abrams is kind of creepy in weapons, but a little bit like sympathetic here. He's just like straight up sympathetic as a character. Well, and shouldn't be this charming. Like that's the thing. Like once again, if you gave this role to the wrong person, like he's just going to be like run of the mill guy wandering around.

Like you're not going to be engaged in him, but because he brings that to this role and like he's, He like approaches everything sort of humorously, but like just to himself because he's usually the only one there till you get further into the movie. And like he's just sort of has his own weird take on what's going on in front of him. And like that, I think, is part of what, you know, makes him so endearing. And like you're just like you do feel for him going through all this crazy stuff. And then he also is just charming enough that you're like, man, come on, I'm rooting for this guy.

So, yeah, he definitely brings that. And, you know, having watched effectively the only other thing I've seen him in, in terms of this level of notoriety being weapons. If you watch that movie, he is not the one where I'm like, I would watch a film with him as the lead. I want to see more of that guy. Right.

But yet it totally works. Like that was the one thing I was concerned about going into the movie was like, is that guy from weapons really going to be like a believable sympathetic, like every man lead? Totally. 100%. Like, yeah, it's he, he really just has a believably like organic quality to him.

That is not replicatable in a lab. Like that just kind of like effortless charisma is something that you either have or don't have as an act. And I, like you said, I think, I think he's well suited for rom-coms or like, future kind of comedy action, comedy, horror adjacent things like he because of his size, you could pair him opposite someone who's bigger than him, too, and have that be kind of like the difference between the two of them is their height and not like a Kevin Hart, the rock level of disparity between the two. But I mean, again, you pair him opposite someone who is a little bit more intimidating in size. You could do something like that, too.

He is a actor who I'm excited to see what he does further because he carries. This movie on his own. And it's, he's being asked to do a lot, but I, it looks, it's so effortless. And I think that's a huge credit to Zack Kreger and him as an actor and just being able to operate on all cylinders in terms of being charming, empathetic, but also entertaining and believable as a lead. And you want to see, you don't want to see bad things happen to him, but by the end of.

The movie, you're bummed. But it also is, you also understand like, well, that's just what happens in a thing like, Yeah. It's it's sort of like and we've seen it sort of happening because we see him like infected pretty early on, like he's got the bite pretty early and we see him kind of every once in a while look down and scratch at it and like it's getting worse and like so. We know it's coming and your only hope is, you know, they've got a cure at the lab and maybe that'll pull it out at the end. But you kind of know this is almost like operatic in the way that you're being presented by the, you know, a silly opera, but nonetheless, very like huge in tone of like how. over the top, crazy, gross action horror is going on here.

So by the end, are we going to see him like, you know, like doing the Kong roaring at the camera by the end of it as the planes are flying? Like, it's very King Kong end of the movie, pretty much. Whereas, you know, by the time we've gone through that crazy journey with him, then, OK, this is how we're going out. So like you just kind of have to accept it. And, you know, by the end of it, you do, like you said, it's kind of Shakespearean in a way.

It's, like, tragic, right? Like, the guy with the kid who has, you know, accepted that he wants to be a father now and wants to go and, like, have a family is, like, now he just dies and turns into a monster who... you know, is going to be the father, you know, metaphorically of the virus spreading further. So, you know, it's like, you know, it's again, kind of, it is operatic to dumb opera, like you said, but it is operatic in a way. But again, I think that's what's so smart about Zach Kreger as a writer. And as a director is he understands how to take advantage of things we've seen before in a million different ways.

But he is using it in creating a version of this franchise that could can and will and does work as a film. And no one else really influences. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just think it takes a lot of willpower to make a movie like this because you've got to really be invested for longer than just, well, I'm making this movie. There's a lot of investment here that comes from just being a fan of this thing. Yeah. Well, next up, The Flood is what they're saying for him, which is a high-concept sci-fi thriller, and they're shooting for August of 2028, so I don't know if he's going to have anything in between now and then.

No. But that is what they're listing as his next directorial project. Huh. Interesting. I'd heard the title in the last couple of days, but I also thought there was something else that's similarly titled.

I'm trying to figure out what that was because I was like, it can't be that because that's coming out like in a couple of months. I'm not surprised that he's just working on more horror stuff and, you know, making more horror movies or sci-fi movies. and kind of probably just ratcheting up the budget and ratcheting up the level of production value. The film that you're talking about is being produced by Amblin, New Line, and Vertigo, which is, I mean, New Line and Amblin? Jesus Christ. Okay.

And it's a space movie. So it means it's automatically like double to triple the budget of Resident Evil. Massive budget, comparatively, yeah. So it's, you know, Zack Krieger is not hurting. And that's a good thing.

Like, I like to see directors who start out as, you know, someone making, you know, a film like Barbarian that was what, like a couple million? Four million, you said. Yeah, something like that. And it's like now he's going to be working on a film that undoubtedly is like Going to be at least 100, probably more if it's a space movie for God's sake. So good for him.

You know, I you know, we we kind of ended last episode with a well, we don't know how this is going to pan out in the in the week to come with. Resident Evil versus Halloween. But man, filmmakers have come a long way since Rob Zombie loved Halloween enough. To reboot it. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a different take. Yeah. And it's not here comes the flood. That's the one I was like, there's some flood movie coming out.

I think it's the beginning of twenty twenty seven. That's like a Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson action heist movie. I was like, what the hell is that? That's the one where they're like robbing a bank during like a typhoon or something. Which isn't there already?

Wasn't there like a 90s movie? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't Hard Rain? No, that's another one.

What's the one with Christian Slater? There's a Christian Slater one where they're robbing in the middle of a typhoon or something. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, wasn't there a movie that came out recently where they were robbing in the middle of a hurricane? Like the Hurricane Truck Heist or something?

Isn't that the name of a movie? Like literally, isn't that the name? God. Look, whatever. You want to just make the same movie like 8 million times over, be my guest, whatever.

Fine. How many more London have fallen or White House have fallen movies are there? Like five more with Gerard Butler? Probably. Eventually, they'll switch him out with an even lesser actor and they'll still keep making them.

Sam Worthington? Yeah, sure. Zai Courtney? These guys have to work too, damn it. I know, right?

Somebody's got to put Vegemite on toast. My God. No, you know, it's funny. This is, I think, set a good example for future filmmakers as to how to adapt a video game successfully. And this is not like the first successful video game movie.

I would say like Detective Pikachu kind of had that beat. Like Detective Pikachu came out and was pretty good. It was actually surprisingly. And let's talk about the amount of money those Mario Brothers animated movies made because that is ridiculous how much money. And I was like that.

And I ended up seeing the second one with a group of kids. There was like a my nephew's birthday party was at one of those. And I'm like, all right, this will be an interesting way to see it. And, like, they were into it. So, I mean, like, it still registers with kids.

Like, Mario still works. Like, no matter how many years go by, like, a whole new crop of kids shows up and, like, a whole bunch of them are still into Mario. So, the fact that, like, they were just thrilled with going to see Mario, like, it kind of was amazing. So, like... just that. And it's again, they're fine.

Like it's telling the Mario story and even less of a focused version in that second one. They were already like, OK, I guess we got to come up with something else to do now. But the second one is just oh it's not i don't know it's it's still made a billion dollars but yeah it made so much money so i'm like kids will show up for that stuff so second again. Whether a movie of all time my yeah. That's why i was like you can you can argue whether it was a critical success but financially like you're hard pressed to find something making more money than those mario brothers movies Well, other than the other Mario Brothers movie, it's other than the- Mario Brothers and Mario Brothers.

Masterpiece that is the original Super Mario Brothers versus these animated things that they make. What's crazy is, and I think this is a good spot to kind of bring the conversation of video game movies to a close with the top 10 video game movies by gross. So it's Mario Brothers at number one with 1.3 billion. Of course. Then that second Mario Brothers movie with another billion.

And then the Minecraft movie with almost a billion as well. That's what I'm saying. These kids keep going. And then it takes a hard half of a jump down. It's now only $ 500 million.

For Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Pokemon Detective Pikachu is at $ 500 million as well. Warcraft, almost $ 500 million. $ 430. Rampage, $ 430. This is the one that's surprising here. Uncharted, $ 400 million.

Yeah, I don't know anybody who liked that movie. I didn't even know anybody who saw that movie. Oh. Yeah, pretty much. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, $ 400 million.

And then this one is also relatively surprising. And it's also surprising because the popularity of the lead, I think, is higher now than it was at the time that this movie came out. But the Angry Birds movie. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah.

Look, they can't all be Tekken. I know that's your favorite, but. Dude, number 11 is the one that will blow your mind. Number 11, Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time. Which is uncharacteristically the worst of all of those movies.

People love some Gyllenhaal. They love some Gyllenhaal as a Persian man. There's nobody more Persian than Gyllenhaal. Well, all those A's and L's and H's clearly belie the sense of a Muslim man. What's crazy is, yeah, of those movies, the best of those movies probably is Rampage.

I'm just kidding. No one would ever. I think the best of those movies is probably Detective Pikachu. Maybe the Super Mario Brothers movie and Detective Pikachu 1A, 1B. I mean, it makes me want to go play Rampage, if that helps.

No kidding. If ever there's a game I did want to play, I did love and spent a good amount of quarters smashing up some buildings back in the day. I saw that movie in theaters. It's not as bad as I would have thought because Jesse Dean Morgan is pretty good in that movie. I watched it eventually and I'm like, yeah, I mean, in a world where the American versions of Godzilla exist, like this is not really any different.

So enjoy it if you want. It's fine. Like it's a movie. All right. I guess I never really thought about it as like a kind of like dumbed down kaiju.

I mean, pretty much. I mean, that's to me, that's what the game was. It was like when you were a kid that grew up watching Godzilla movies, this is your chance to play as the monster and go smash up some buildings. So like, I love the game for that reason. But then the movie was like, yeah, that's kind of like those characters.

What's crazy looking at this list, Super Mario Brothers obviously is at the top now and 1.3 billion is a hard number to beat. But Detective Pikachu and Warcraft were both number one at one point in time. They both peaked at number one. And what's crazy is Prince of Persia also was at number one at one point. Well, again, the bar was low further back.

Oh, the bar was really low. And what's crazy about the Angry Birds movie is the lead in that movie was Jason Sudeikis, of all people, who is like undoubtedly more popular now than he's ever been. Well, in an entirely different world. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, still for recognizable still for a role that he was in.

But yeah, now it's it's in front of the camera as opposed to doing a voice. But yeah, it's a video game movies have come a long way. And I guess I guess at the end of this nearly three hour podcast, I guess I would be willing to say that this is probably the best video game movie I've ever seen. I mean, yeah, like I said, you go farther back, the bar is pretty low, but even compared to the new ones, the new ones all just made a lot of money, but they weren't necessarily worlds better. They weren't terrible.

They weren't terrible, I guess. I don't know. I guess there's one other one we should mention is Five Nights at Freddy's. That's true. It wasn't a game I was invested in because it came along way later, but...

Kids loved it, and kids, once again, crossover. They were willing to make a trip to the theater, which is not always what kids do anymore. It made so much money, it escaped bad. Yeah, and got a sequel, for God's sakes. And it might be getting another sequel?

Which wouldn't surprise me, yeah. It's like people actually responded to it, so... Well, it. Made like $ 400 million, or $ 300 million, so it probably will get another sequel. You can't argue when it pulls in the cash.

No. And that's the thing. I think we're living in that kind of golden age of video game movies because of the Super Mario Brothers movie and Detective Pikachu. And now I think Resident Evil will continue to push that kind of... conversation forward and something like the last of us or the god of war tv show or fallout like they're all good examples of good versions of video game properties being adapted that aren't prince of persia or uncharted or a fucking Need for Speed movie. You remember that?

Aaron Paul is in something else. Again, why? Because people liked him in Breaking Bad. Because F1 was almost like a real movie, but we can do one too, you know? Was F1 a video game movie or was that just like a sports movie?

Just cars. I think they were just like, they're making car movies now. Ford versus Ferrari and did this one and every year they kept coming out with another one or two cars. Well, there was a Gran Turismo movie. Remember that?

It had David Harbour in it. Sure. And it was and Neil Blomkamp directed it, man. Remember when Neil Blomkamp was like, I'm going to direct that alien movie with Sigourney. Never mind.

Yeah, he directed. Instead, he directed the Gran Turismo movie and Chappie. Man, talk about a guy who just like nosedived right off a cliff. Like and I didn't even like District 9. I fucking can't stand that movie. but dude, like district nine people liked, and then everything else past that's just been like, nah, man, I'm good.

I don't want to see some fucking robot running around with, with, I don't know, with Ninja from, uh, from Deontward. That's the thing. I was never more impressed that a movie came together than chappy. I was just like, I, by the time you get to the end and what happens at the i'm just like how did you guys get them to give you money to make this like this is amazing on that level alone you got this movie made for what is happening on screen right now i'm impressed Yeah, $ 50 million. Well, because again, to speak to someone being given a lot of money when they made something on very little, District 9 was like a $ 30 million movie and made like 200.

And was nominated for an Oscar. Which is crazy. And then Elysian came out and I'm pretty sure the only people that went and saw Elysian were the people who saw District 9 and thought it was going to be good like that movie. so yeah yeah it's video game movies are just it's it's hard and it's hard to make good ones but I think to your point like Resident Evil might be the first good one I've seen where it's like this is actually I would say like it it adapts the source material well it exists within a world that feels like a video game world and it it does something with the source material that is not a direct adaptation. But it's not also that meta shit that they did with Minecraft and Jumanji, where it's like, well, it's like a half and a half.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I think the Minecraft movie honestly worked better than it had any reason to because it was. Pretty much- And I just hate the Jumanji. They know what they are and they're not trying to do much more. Minecraft is just pretty much branded Jumanji.

It's just Jumanji with a brand name attached to it. Yeah. It even has Jack Black, for fuck's sake. And it has the other non-Samoan actor who's not The Rock. It's got Hawaiian Jason Momoa.

Again, they trade one... Here's the thing. Jason Momoa is ten times more charismatic than The Rock ever has been and ever will be. And I think that that shows in something like Minecraft, which, by the way... Should not have been that funny, but it is quite funny because Jason Momoa is fucking hilarious.

He's just a funny actor. Like they gave him the ability to be funny, which is not something I would have ever thought was possible from the guy who is playing Aqua, bro. See, that's the thing. If they let him get out of his own way, like he started taking himself to see like he started thinking he was as cool as he they kept trying to make him. in some of the stuff. And it's like, if you let him be a goofball, like he is, like he seems to be like, it's okay.

But like when he starts taking himself too seriously, it's like, Oh no, this is, this is insufferable. Stop. Which is Aqua Bro, pretty much like writ large. Those movie birds. Yeah.

But, you know, I think to your point, like this, this is a video game movie that now we can kind of like put on the shelf and be like, this is a good example of a video game thing that I think anyone, anyone can approach within reason. Maybe it's a little gross for the lay person. Yeah, but I mean, again, like it's it's a fun romp in the vein of Evil Dead and Dead Alive and those kind of action. Well, more comedy horror, but I would say horror comedy. This is less comedy horror and more horror comedy.

So it's definitely leans more into the horror than the comedy. And there's some action to it. But the action, I think, is as much action as Resident Evil is known for early on, which is to say it's peppered in there. But that's not the point. And maybe that's what the next film will be, will be more akin to a Resident.

Evil 4 or 8. Or second half of 9, where it's this big bombastic action film and you got people with machine guns gunning down zombies and backflipping them and suplexing them, all kinds of wild... Leon in Resident Evil 4, if he shoots a zombie in the kneecap and the zombie falls to his knees, Leon picks him up and suplexes him backward. And their head explodes. Like you do.

Exactly. It's like this game is not trying to be fucking serious. And I'm glad that the movie understands that. And as someone who's been effectively, for as long as I can remember, a video game player, a resident evil fan like this film i think was made for someone like me by someone like me and i think while it does work for someone like me ultimately more importantly i think it would work for a pretty big audience of people that don't know anything about resident evil but this is a great way to kind of get them up to speed about. It yeah i think that's that's the impressive part is like i said it works in both ways it's a total tie-in if you want it to be Or it just works as a fun horror comedy roller coaster, essentially, that like by the end, you're just like, that was a great movie.

Like it was just a fun ride. Even if you weren't invested in the video game part of it, it doesn't rely on you being a video game fan. It can just be there to be a fun horror comedy. And it is that. So, until the next time Brian and I talk about a new movie, which will be pretty much immediately next week when we talk about a film that has no zombies in it, but it does have.

It is a horror movie, apparently. It's... There's somebody undead. I don't know. Yeah, I know.

It might be our lead by the time we're done. Yeah, I don't know what the hell is going on, but apparently someone was like, hey, that guy who was catching all the rapists in the mid-2000s, wouldn't it be crazy if he was the villain in a horror movie? And that's how primetime comes. So on the next episode of the CultureCast with Brian, anyways, we do another crossover with... We're going to be talking about primetime, the Robert Pattinson, Chris Hansen film, which is two names that I would never have thought would work together.

But yet here we are. Yeah. The preview before this movie was the longer version of, of that, that I had seen before. And I was just like, yeah, this is just insane. Like it is a full on horror presentation of, of this story that does not seem like it should be a horror.

I mean, it's horrific things were going on, but not, not the way that they're wrapping this up in this movie. So it's going to be interesting to see where they go and how we take it. And I'm curious if it will just be branded nightcrawler. Which, yeah, I mean, it's, It's definitely, I mean, that seemed like it was pretty crazy at the time because I thought Nightcrawler was pretty well done. But this looks like it's taking that idea and just like dirtying it up even more.

Which is crazy because this is now based off of a real person, ostensibly. Even though Chris Hansen, I think, would say nay nay and would sue you or take out ads in front of the movie. So until then, Brian, where can people find you and the things that you work on? Well, as of since the last episode, they are now available at your stop. So, you know, you should be over at the Weirding Way media picking up all your shows.

But in addition to that, if you want something more direct, you can also go to MovieMeltdown.com and I have updated it. We've got the links that take you to the Weirding Way feed and then all of the specific episodes of our individual show. So, yeah, definitely go there or go find us on your social medias. And I usually post each day what the new episode is and what we've got coming up if you're trying to follow along. So, yeah.

Just get on any of that and you'll see what we've got coming up next. Well, and as for me, like Brian just said, weirdingwaymedia.com is where you can go to check out this show and the crossovers to come with Brian, where we talk about primetime or the past episodes where we talked about Halloween. one and two on two separate episodes which if that's a thing that you want to go listen to you totally should because there's a lot of great conversation that brian and i have about rob zombie and his effect on horror films and remaking films it's a whole thing and we talk about the movies obviously but the movies are a lot of times just a jumping point to have a conversation about the things that the movie is about uh not saying those movies aren't good aren't i also saying that.

But but they open up a lot of doors to have conversations about a lot of different avenues and areas and things that came about in conjunction with those movies. And then we also talk about those movies. Sorry, we don't recap the movie completely. If you want that, Chris Stuckman is on you. And yeah, like rate and review this show on iTunes, then Spotify in that order that helps the most.

Head on over to patreon.com slash culturecast if you want to kick a couple dollars my way. Every little bit helps. But more importantly, just like, rate and review this show, Brian's show, any of the weirding way media shows that you listen to on iTunes and then Spotify. Yeah. And make sure to come back for the next time that Brian and I do a crossover where we talk about Chris Hansen, the pedo slayer.